


This is What it Looks Like (Rough Draft)

by KennaM



Category: Original Work
Genre: Metafiction, NaNoWriMo, Rough Draft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-07
Updated: 2013-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-28 11:30:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 61,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KennaM/pseuds/KennaM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Original Work, extremely rough (almost completely unedited, for spelling or grammar or plot consistencies) version of my NaNoWriMo'12 story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is What it Looks Like (Rough Draft)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm only putting this online for the few friends I have who said they want to read it, and have no idea what they're getting into. Rough, unedited NaNoWriMo stories from me are VERY rough, as I type fast and am trying to meet daily counts, and usually don't bother to fix spelling mistakes on words as I'm still typing them. I also tend to forget to add things or I'll start to put in plot points that end up going nowhere. In this version, I've also completely forgone any form of chapter breaks, so if anyone still wants to read this and then manages to get even ten thousand words in, color me very impressed.
> 
> I will probably start to slowly edit this over time, starting with a preliminary microedit to fix spelling/grammar and space out the paragraphs to be readable

Gen, AU - High Shcool AU crack, some fluff.

“Well, that seemed pretty pointless,” he said, watching as the platter of glasses filled up with orange juice. The machine pushed forward a plate full of cookies, which Damien hadn’t noticed yet.  
“Right, isn’t it cool?” Rose sad, her voicce overflowing with excitement. “How did you get it to do all that?”  
Rick puffed up his chest with pride, and Damien rolled his eyes. He grabbed a cookie off the plate and returned to his desk to sit on top of the table. “It’s a Rube Goldberg machine,” Rick was explaining. “All the little parts wrk together to make the end rsult. It takes a lot of delicate work and precision.”  
Rose sounded impressed.  
“You could have just poured the glass yourself,” Damien called up, mouth ful of cookie. “Why go through all that troube?”  
Rick looked hurt, but it was Rose who shot Damien the dirty look. “The point isn’t the end result,” she said, glaring at him, “it’s all the little things that allow you to get to that end resutl.”

Mina switched her font color to red, and typed at the end of the line: [would Rose be saying that? doesn’t she not understand wholly what the rube goldberg machine is?]

“Yeah,” Rick agreed, but it wasn’t very convinving. “It doesn’t matter how easy it is to pour a glass of juice on its own, it matters how difficult it is to get a bunch of scrap pieces to do it.” He gestued at the complex array of hardware parts and kids toys that littlered the front of the classroom. A clapping monkey toy was still wringing on the floor somewhere.  
“Must be very difficult for you,” Damien muttered to himself, but it was drowned out by their teacher, cutting into the conversation.  
“Very good job!” he said, as the class agreed, “very impressive! Great way to think originally!”

Mina hadd to switch ehr text color to red again. She typed: [that sentence sounds a bit awkward. another way to word it?]

“Thank you,” Rick grinned, and handed one of the glasses to their teacher, who accepted.  
“mm, non-alchoholic,” the teacher said, nodding his approval. “I was almost afraid.”  
“Of course not,” Rick said with his most innocent smile. He handed the next glass to Rose and Damien groaned inwardly. Overal this had not been a good semester, and it didn’t seem like it was getting any better.

Mina clicked down to the last line of text. Her font color changed back automatically to black and she sighed. ‘Technology,’ she muttered to herself. She clickd it over to red again, hit the enter key a couple times, and began to type again: Pretty good start - I know I’m interested to see where this might be going. No spelling mistakes but a couple grammer issues. Everyone seems IC though Rose could do with a bit more characteization. You choice. I notice you ndidn’t have Maddie make an appearance. I’m goingg to assume hes shows up later, and that you’re not just trying to make me sad. Maybe a bit more dialogue? but not too importance. It might also be neat to have more description on the machine, as long as you dont get too wordy.  
She sat back from her laptop, and stared sown at the screen, reading what over she had written to make sure there were no spelling mistakes ov her own. She actually missed one - and for that maatter she was completely wrong about the fic needing more characterization - but neither of us being around to tell her this and Ben not being terribly reliable, she never found ot. But that’s OK because she can have a few tsolen perfect moments in her life. Nothing wrong with that.  
Satisfied that everything was fine, Mina hit the send button. The email shot off, through the server web, pinging to the main website source and being sent off to an entirely different server bay, where it was pinged into the inbox of a certain young man. It took all of about a second or two because y’know, technology.  
Ben’s email clietn made a little ringing noise and then went back ti being a none-interactive email client. Ben himself had been waiting with his laptop resting on his thighs, leaning agains t the back of the couch and stairing at a gif file, trying to figure out why that particular subtitle was funny. It must be some osrt of joke or something; it had thousands of notes. people loved it. he din’t get the joke. Later he would realize it was because he hadn’t seem that episode of the somewhat well known television series. It was sort of an inside joke for fans.  
he ringing of the email client almost didn’t register to him, half asleep as he was. When he finally realized what he’d heard, he wondered if maybe he’d imagined it. Ben checked his email anyway and saw the file, opened it, and quickly scanned through the red-texted comments.  
“Geeze,” he said to the empty living room, “Mina you’re lightening. You must be really bored today.” He opened the email reply feature and typed: Hey, thanks Mina! I totally just sent this to you half an hour ago and you totally just read it alkl and beta’d it in no time at all. Putting off doing homework again?”  
He sent that reply off and he started pinging through technology servers again but we’re not going to track it back because all that really matters is the factt hat Mina saw the reply, smiled, and responded: Oh you know it.  
Meanwhile Ben read over the suggestiond and comments, noting which ones where usefull and which one he was going to willfully ginore. He editted the fic in his word processor, adding a few more lines of dialoge and polishing up what he could until he was satisified with what he had. Part of him wanted to wait a day or so before posting it, but he knew he had been working on this fic longer than he’s expected, He quickly checked Mina’s response, chuckled, and changed tabs on his internet browser towards his fanfic hosting webstie.  
Ben was alaays proud of his work. Nothing he’d posted had gotten a ot of attention, but tha was just becuse he was currentl a nobody on the internet. His blog had less than 100 followers (much less, thoguh he wouldn’t tell the exact number to anyone but Mina), and the one comment on a introspective piece written months ago was the only comment any of his fics had gotten. He treasured that comment, which read, in its entirely “Great job! I Love your portray of Damien. Really cool to see what he was probably htinking during this scene! Headcanon accepted,” moer than he was willing to admit.  
uploading the now completed fic to his page didn’t take very long. He had to copy and paste the text into the large text editor, file it under ‘Emerald Streams’ and add the other approrpiate tags, then send five minutes stairing at the page, trying to come up with a title. Titles were the worst.  
BBut then it was published, and the feeling of having something published was always satisfying. Ben reread the story again, now neatly presented on the website, then copied the URL so he could share the link on his blog.  
It took all of five minutes for Mina to respond to that post. Great job, she wrote, so excited to see where you go with this! There are definitely not enough high school AUs for Emerald Streams. Why are people so afraid to write crack?  
Ben rolled his eyes. “Because it’s crack,” he said to the empty living room. He looked around again just to make sure the living room was empty. His mom was away at work and his little brother staying late at a friends house. Just the way he liked it.  
Thanks, he commented back, though as my Beta you got to see how bad this was to begin with. But it’s just after noon where you are, isn’t it? Dont you have class today?  
Mina in fact didn’t have class that day, but she couldn’t respond to Ben immediately, so he spent five minutes waiting, idling browsing his own blog page and refreshing his fanfic site, hoping for signs that people were reading, before giving up and deciding to catch up on all the blogs he followed.  
This was how an average afterschool day went for Ben. He came home, blgged, read blogs, wrote, put off doing homework, and occassionally watched whatever it was his blogs were telling him was amazing and quality and worth watching. When his mom came home, he tried to always be sitting at the dining table, math book open and graph paper covered in equations. He’d learned that a happy evening started with a mom who thought you were a responsible student, not one who slacked off. If her first impression of the night of you was working on schoolwork, it didn’t matter that the hours before she had returned had been filled with other things.  
There was at least a good hour before she came home, so, figuring he was good on time, Ben turned on his TV and switched it to their instant streaming rental service. Laptop stilll sitting next to him on the couch, Ben found the Emerald Streams title and start flipping through the episodes, deciding on one that he enjoyed but hadn’t seen in a while. In it, Damien had returned back to their home timeline and was debating whether or noot to confront their main enemy, a current atagonist who would turn out to be an unlikely ally in a couple of seasons. If Damien succeeded he could save all the world streams (or so he thought), but if he failed, his friends, still at that time trapped in a different world fighting a sub-antagonist, would have no way of getting back hoe.  
Knowing the plot to one random episode of Emerald Streams isn’t actually extremely pertinent. In fact, it was really just a subtle way to tell you what the show is about.  
Ben had been a fan for years. He discovered the show in its second season, was intrigued by the plot, fell in love with the characters and their dynamic, and had despaired the fact that it was not widely recognized in mainstream culture. Until he found his blogging website, a pseudo-community of bloggers who sometimes seemed to have an itnerest in eveyrthing, and discovered that Emerald Streams was one of their main fandoms. There were thousands of people online, making fanart and gifs and graphics, writing fanfic and criticing episodes, characters decisions, doing character studies and critical thinking, writing what could have been the beginning, middle, and ends to persuasive essyas that would make English teachers weep with joy.  
And yet his mother would probably have been very upset to learn just how much time he spent online, making new friends and sharing what he could with the fandom.  
Mina, who was, at that very moment, finally respnding to Ben’s earlier comment, had been one of those friends. She stumbled onto his blog, or he onto hers, neither of hem could remember exactly how it happened. They were both huge fans of the show, and Ben soon learned that a similar point of interest was all you needed to start off a friendship.  
But I’m getting ahead of myself with the exposition. The problem with telling a story about someone who spends most of their time investing in stories is you end up reading a story about a person who is reading a story. I might as well just be telling you that second story and skip the story about the personl reading that story. In this case, it’s a story about a person watching a story - in which the people literally visit multiple stories. And I’m not going to tell you that second story because, in my opinion, Ben’s story is just so much more interesting.  
In Ben’s story, he spends a great deal of time watching a story, and he spends some more time devoted to that story in one way or another. But, merely by existing, he is a character who gets his own story to live. And he can’t live it if I waste another paragraphs expositing.  
Mina replied. Ben did not see that reply because he was watching Damien draw a sigil on a stone wall. Mina waited for Ben to read her reply, and when he didn’t she got bored, closed her laptop, stuffed it into her bookbag, and walked to the other side of campus. It was a technicque she had for killing time, and possibly running into people she might know. There were statisically very few of those on her campus, but the trick had worked a few times in the past.  
This time it didn’t though, and she found a good bench sitting by a hedghe to put her stuff down on. She was stuck on campus for another hour or two until work started, so she figured she might as well kill time productively. She pulled out her sketchpad and logged into her online video rental service.  
They did not watch the same episode - in fact, Mina decided to watch an episode of something else entirely, because being a member of one fandom did not mean you avoided the other fandom entirely. But they both had their computers right ext to them, both in an entirely different world and yet easily together if they happeed to want to be.

-

In their biological anatomy class the next day, Trey sat down next to Ben despite the fact that the seating chart had assigned him to sit on the other side of the room.  
“I don’t have time to play any video agems,” Ben said before terry could even open is mouth. Trey pouted.  
“You’re always going on about how you love stories or whatever, githt? Well, this is the same thing!”  
“Not really,” Ben said. That morning, before school had started, Trey had tried to convince Ben to come to his house that evening to play a video game he had recently picked up.  
“Its an action packed sequeal,” he had said, “where you play as [someone] fighting your way through hordes of aliens to reach an undiscovered planet which is said to have the secret to curing the human race, but once there you learn a terrible and deadly secret! I haven’t gotten very far so I don’t know what that secret is but I know it’s really cool and not just a stupid shoot ‘em up, I swear!”  
If anything, Ben had turned his friend down not because he didn’t want to play the game - he wasn’t very big on Video Games as a whole, but occassionally playing them was fun - but because it would cut into his alone time at home. Time alone at home is a powerful thing.  
“Maybe later,” Ben says, “this weekend, if I have time.” He doesn’t tell Trey that he doesn’t plan on having time that weekend; he plans on spending that time catching up with homework, for about ten minutes, and and spendinf virtual time online with Mina, and the other friends he has made through his blog, and reading whatever book he decides to start the night before, and watching whatever the next movie is on his Ketchup List.  
Ben’s Ketchup List is sort of a joke. It’s easier to say ‘ketchup’ than ‘catch-up’ (it’s a subtle difference), and the ‘catching up’ the list was written for is really just every movie he’s ever heard was worht watching since leMarck. It’s handdwritten in a notebook which he keeps on his bookshelf, next to other notebooks full of other information, useful or no.  
Trey doesn’t know that this is Ben’s plan, and Ben doesn’t know that he wont be able to do anything he plans to do that weekend.  
“I’ll hold you to that,” Trey says, pointing a finger and narrowing his eyes dramatically. The teacher in the front of the room is already talking, so Ben doesn’t answer.  
At lunch Ben and Trey sit together in the courtyard outside the cafeteria. I don’t know what they talk about, because Ben spends the whole time thinking about the new meme he watched get started yesterday. By the time he gets home, he thinks, someone will have managed to perfect the meme. There will be a post sitting on his blog with the comment ‘you have won the internet. everyone else go home.’ He is right.  
“Am I right or am I right?” Trey says, and Ben realizes he has no idea what Trey is talking about. It’s no matter; luckily, with options narrow enough, the answer is easy.  
“One hundred percent,” Ben answers, nodding along as if they’ve just shared some secret judgement - which, for all he knows, he has. Trey nods back and they laugh.  
The lunch bell rings too early, or prehaps ont early enough, and they seperate for classes on opposite wings of the school. Ben spends most of English doodling in his notebook as the class reads aloud, and plotting out the next chapter of his fanfic while they’re supposed to be working on their essay outlines. Ther’s no point on preparing for the ssay when it wont even get written until the day before it’s due - especially since, in this case, it wont be written at all.  
He spends art class copying the drawings on the whiteboard and trying to think of something original to do on his own, while occasionally glancing at the leftovers of the large Rube Goldberg machine at the back of the room.  
Ben walks home after school, partway with a friend who splinters off into his own neighorhood nd the rest of the way on his own. He glances at his wristwatch habitually after passing a small family-ownned orchard to confirm what time it is, then mentally rolls the hour hand back three hours. Mina is still on her lunch break, he thinks to himself, as he always does, has another full 42 minutes. He walks faster.  
A half hour later, lying half on his side stretched on the couch with the wamr base of the laptop on his stomach, Ben thinks that it is an odd sort of rutine he has set up for himself. Espcially since he has never been a big fan of rutts and the kind of ruts people get themselves into when they establish pointless rutines.  
I am about to watch another episode, he types into his blog’s text field, and trying to decide which episode to watch. I’ve seen then all half a million times each (he hyperbolizes), and suddenly I wonder why I am dedicating so much of my time to this. I have become an expert in the field o this one particular American television show and some people are expert in animal research or geothermal whatever or sculpting things on the lead of pencils. And I know the intricacies of a tv show better than I understand high school politics.  
He pauses, looks up at the selection he’s made starting to play on his television screen, and continues to type: but luckily I don’t have too much time to wax existential becase I decided on the Christmas episode and this is pretty much the best episode ever written.  
Ben published the post, and though hi focus is now on the best episode ever written, in the back of his mind he is waiting for someone to respond, for someone to validate his concerns and maybe tell him that, yes, he is wasting his life, get a new hobby, learn how to rock climb or bench press or something. Mna doesn’t respond, though he can see that she’s online, nd for ten minutes the internet simply moves forward with its own digital life, at the speed of the internet, letting Ben’s wayward comment fall seemingly unnoticed.  
Then a reply appears, from one of Ben’s other online friends. It reads: to be fair, I don’t think anyone understands high school politics.  
The laptop is on and nearby for the rest of the evening. Ben checks it after finishing his homework, and it takes him somewhere between five to ten minutes to read everything, laughing at certain posts and groaning inwardly at others. His mom is starting on dinner in the next room and he can sort of see that she is unhappy with the way he is spending his time. When he closes the laptop, he piles his notebooks and textbooks on top, holding everything sideways as he returns it to his room so she can’t see him taking the computer along as well.  
In the sixty seconds that passes, Mina has posted to ehr blog again, this time with an array of fanart. Today’s haul, she has typed below the series of images. Econ was boooooorrring and you can not BELIEVE how fun it is to digitally ink something afte it’s been scanned. Addicted to my tablet.  
Ben smiles to himself and peruses the artwork more slowly. You need to stop being insanely good, he types in as a eply, and they weriously need to start paying you or something. You didb these during class?  
He makes sure to share the post so his followers will see it. She also always makes sure to share his fanfic when he posts it. It’s a mutuall artistic apprecciation with the unspoken hope that someday one or the other of them will become well known within their fan community and then the other will rise in popularity as well by proxy. So far it’s only sort of worked.  
She finally replies, three hours earlier and yet at the same time. Her messages take milliseconds to reach him, racing at the speed of the internet, from three time zones away.  
Mina sits in the school library, in one of the further back rooms, laptop plugged in conviently and tablet sitting nearby. Sunlight still streams in through the high windows because the sun never goes down, really, it just shines somewhere else in the world. Her side oft he internet looks vastly ifferent from Ben’s but at the same time exactly the same.  
She shoots Ben a quick reply with a half smile, becuse she’s pleased with herself and she enjoys sharing things that please her, but her mind is also preoccupied. She has seven tabs open in her browser and one of them is Ben’s previous post. Mina can’t stop thinking about it, wondering how to reply and adequately put word to her feelings.  
On the other side of the screen, Ben has three browser windows open, prefering not to use mutliple tabs, and switches to another one to chat with another online friend. His mom calls that dinner is ready and he knows she doesn’t approve of how he spends his time, thinks he should go out more often, ‘play with friends’ as she would put it. Trey often tells Ben that they need to hang out more, that Ben doesn’t hang out often enough. Ben actually agrees, he doesn’t hang out with his IRL best friend nearly as often as he would like, but it’s sort of hard to when one is hanging out with people in virtually all their free time.  
That was sort of a pun and a double entendre, if you didn’t catch it.  
Ben moves on with his life because every character, between the lines of text that become your window into their world, is really just slowly moving on with their life. It’s as slow as your own life is, but played in fast forward because that’s the only way to egt you to top and pay more attention to the story than to your won life for a while.  
Mina does not. Or she does, but in a different way.  
That night Ben reads a book for class, finding that he is actually enkjoying it, with the laptop plugged in and open at his feet. He glances at it every few ppages or so to see if someone has sent him a message, and at the end of the chapter he switches attention to it, because despite the fact that it is a semi-flat screen and electrical wiring, there are also people there.  
People, inside that screen, on the other side, halfway across the world, yelling into obliviion. That’s the way Ben sees it, at least. He can’t hear them but he can choose to pay attention to them, to see what the have to say and if it’s worth listening to. His governemtn teacher laments to modern age and how people are losing their abiliy to connect to other but Ben has connected virtually with more people he has never met than he’s ever connected to physically. In the real world there is a all around every one he meets, around himself. He doesn’t know how to penetrate that wall ithout hurting himself or someone else. In the virtual world that wall is the creen, and it is see-through. Everyone knows it, and everyone walks up to it, pressing their hands to it in a best effort to connect to the people on the other side.  
In the real world, Ben has never held, much less touched, another person’s hand.  
The time difference means Ben and Mina are both lying in their own personal beds at the same time, but Ben is nodding off and Mina is just resting for a moment before heading out to a late dinner with friends. The time difference is a world phenomenon Mina likes to use to her advantage, knowing she can post replies that Ben wont be able to see until the morning, that she’ll have all night to decide she didn’t mean to say that, or find a better way to word it.  
Ben’s instant messenger client beeps at him, and he realizes he’s been staring at the same page in the book for five minutes. He yawns, memorizes the page number, and turns to the machine at his feet.  
You still awake?, Mina is asking. He types in a sleepy response and shifts in the bed  
OK, she types, and she’s not writing out the full idea in one line so he knows that means she is hesitant about what she is saying. Not to be weird at all. Break. I swear. Break.  
OK?, he wills her to spit it out.  
If there was a way for us to meet up, break, and not like, break, oho fly out to meet my online friend because we’re tight, break, but like if your mom decided to take the family to San Diego for a summer trip or something, break, or if for some reason I had to go o New York for like a class thing or a family thing, break.  
And then there was an extended pause. At least twenty seconds. Ben types in, yes?  
That wouldn’t be weird, right? her reply finally comes.  
It’s kind of weird that you’re bringing it up now, he types, do you have a family thing coming up?  
No, she says, not that I know of at least. Break. It just occured to me, we’ve been friends for how long now? and it would make sense if we met up, and I wouldn’t want it to be weird.  
Not even two years, he answers.  
Whoa really?  
Yeah. Time seems to move faster on the internet. But it wouldn’t be weird, I swear. Or, it would be a bit weird, but that’s normal.  
I guess, yeah.  
And, he suddenly thinks with a smile, typing quickly, you would have to promise me that you wouldn’t show up with a machete and chop me into little bits. I don’t think mom would be cool with that.  
Her reply is ten seconds later than a reply normally would be, and it’s a complex emoticon featuring asian type characters, suggesting that she agrees to those terms but in a suspicious manner. Ben can’t figure out how she manages to do such greaat emoticons, especially so quickly. HHe types, in response, /suspicious glare.  
Sash commands rank very highly on Ben’s list of greatest things the internet has invented for itself.  
They talk for a while longer, then Mina makes her excuse and leaves. Ben logs off his chat client, checks the time, and actually turns his laptop off, forcing himself to ignore it as he goes back to his book and tried to sleep.  
Mina stares at her screen a bit longer before leaving to hang out with IRL friends. She returns to her computer an hour later, ten o’clock, way too early for a college student to be going to bed but late enough that a high schooler, three timezones later, would definitely be asleep.  
She pulls her laptop innto her lap and find the tab in which she has open Ben’s post from that afternoon. Waxing existential, she thinks to herself. Thinking about ones own existance. She taps the wall over her screen and then the wall behind her, and then the wall of her cranium. There is no physical wall around efining her own existance and yet she somehow knows that there is a wall that exists. I swear I didn’t tell her, she figured it out on her own.  
Because it’s important, she types into the reply box of Ben’s post. Even if it doesn’t seem like it. I ahte to say trite things like ‘everything happens for a reason’ but the unierse is ordered, whether we can see it or not. Our universe is, at least. There’s some ultimatte goal and I don’t think the unniverse would let you sit and watch every episode of a television series half a million times over if it didn’t further the universe’s plans somehow.  
To be completely honest, Mina is not 100% correct at this time. The universe is perfectly willing to let Ben sit and watch half a million hyperbolictic episodes of a television series if that’s what he wishes t do with his ime. Their universe, at least. The universe can only try so hard to force actions on any free thinker. This doesn’t restrict the universe from taking what it’s given to further its plans anyways.

-

Before heading to school and cutting himself off from the virtual world for the greater part of the day, Ben skims over his blog. He reads some of the humorous posts that appear and laughs, and queues some of the interesting digital artwork he comes across, and reads Mina’s messages.  
Mina sends him another message before she finally nods off, asking if he thinks world jumping is possible. He knows she’s not awake, so he allows his reply to grow lenghthy.  
world-jumping? he types. like in emerald streams?, and then he erases because of course like in emerald streams, what else is Mina talking about. He doesn’t really know what to say because as much as he loves books and tv shows he has never been one to allow himself to blur the line between reality and fiction. This is real, he constantly reminds himself in class, I am not going to get a letter in the mail saying I am really a wizard, I am not going to run into a talking cat on my way home, and there isn’t a secret underground society of werewolves.  
I don’t know, he finally types. Looking at the clock Ben knows he doesn’t have much time to linger on the existential train of thought. I guess technically. It’s just a TV show, you know. Unless you’re suggesting that whoever started the show did it as a subtle way of getting the word out? Seems a bit far fetched. I mean i wish it was possible, that would be awesome, but I don’t know how we could ever prove that, or even find out about it for outselves.  
When he logs back in after getting home from school, Ben sees the reply in his inbox from Mina. It reads, maybe we’re in a science-fiction/fantasy. Maybe we’re the lead characters and we’re just happily going about our lives and then one day we discover that everything we know is a lie and reality is somewhere else.  
Ben laughs to himself and types, you have to pick one. Science Fiction or Fantasy. Not the same thing.  
I know, Mina responds back within ten minutes. She must be online. But if its a fantasy then I’m the main character and if it’s a Scince Fiction then you’re tha main character, and I don’t want to presume. Plus, there are some stories that technically fall under both.  
Maybe we’re in a realistic-fiction, Ben responds, ignoring other pressing matters on his bog because this conversation is just too interesting. That’s the whole point of a realstic fiction, right? so maybe we’re in that and the plot is ‘girl spends way too much time inoring the real world and wanting to visit fantasy land that she misses out on whats important and all that. Oscar winning movie, idk who stars, learns to enjoy her family and finds love and gets a job doing what she wants at the end because that makes sense.  
Mina actuallly types an ellipses before responding, simply, with: did you just call yourself a girl?  
Ben laughs and he wants to be able to ‘like’ that message because he actually think of a good response. The setup was too good but there’s no comeback for the comeback and that’s totally his fault.  
Within five minutes Mina gets the problem and continues responding. That’s just what some nobody side character in a fantasy would say, she types. Your character doesn’t even get a last name becase your whole point in the story is to convince the protagonist that there is no magic and no point chasing after magic.  
Ouch, is Ben’s response, that’s cold. But that can’t be the case because you already know my last name.  
True. So we’re not in a fantasy, and you’re the protagonist, and my job is to make sure you snap out of it and understand that Time Travel is Real. I get a last name because I am cool and I probably get to travel with you for the majority of your trips, or maybe I get to be the catalyst that gets you time traveling. Booyah.  
Is that was this is about?, Ben asks, because he finally things he gets it. this is how Mina’s mind works. You want to make sure it isn’t eird if we meet up because you fully plan on us time traveling together? Mina, I am shocked.  
Ben can practically see the smile she must have had when she types Dang, caught red-handed. It’s a devilish smile, with her lips pulled back to show off the fangs she doesn’t actually have. He’s seen that smile before when they’ve had webcam-chats, and it feels like a reward for being awesome.  
Well, I’m still fairly sure that time travel isn’t possible, except for the forward kind, and only at a rate of one second per second. Or I guess in this case, world jumping. if you can find a way to do it I will reconsider by stance on this issue.  
They continue to talk, through stilted messages on the blog instead of instant messaging, while Ben works n the next chapter of his fic. The first draft is the worst, and it always willl be. Luckily, Mina is still there for the final draft, to make sure he contines not to suck.  
The next day is Saturday. Ben pretends to sleep in but actually gets up just as early as usual, and pulls the laptop up off the floor onto his stomach again. A solid two hours can be devoted in the ornings to whatever he wants without mom complaining about wasted time.  
When Mina isn’t on in the morning, Ben doesn’t think anything off it. She is still asleep, of course. Saturday mornings are actually late-sleep days for college students, and I guess any other student who doesn’t have something more exciting to do during that time.  
When she doesn’t respond by noon, Ben figures she must have not had time to check her bog before dashing off to work. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Ben finds it a bit curious because he knows, from their conversation the night before, that she set her alarm. Maybe her blog was full of other things to see, though. Maybe she didn’t have time to check her personal messages.  
Ben writes up the next chapter on the family desktop. He can do this on the word processor and mom will think he is working on his essay. The one due Monday. The one he isn’t actually going to write. The first draft, saved, gets sent to his email, and then deleted off the computer so his mom will never find it. She loves to think of him as a skilled writer but he’s pretty sure she wouldn’t be very happy with where his writing talent is being put to use.  
Then he and is brother get dragged off to run errands for the afternoon, ruining both of their plans. Ben makes sure to sigh a lot but he glares at his brother whenever he complain. Billy was going to play an online game with his friends all afternoon, and maybe ride his rollerboard with the kids in the neighborhood. It’s not like he was actually going to do anything worth doing.  
Ben tries on shoes and gives his opinion on shirt colors and his mind wanders back to Mina, and what she had been saying the other day, and the fact that she hadn’t been online at all that morning. He doesn’t consider himself to have much of a gut instinct but if he did have one, he believes this would be it activating right now.  
Ben logs onto his laptop as soon as he gets home. He doesn’t care if his mom sees him because she’s probably aware that he wants at least sometime online. There is no new message in his inbox (well, there is one, but it’s a chain message from someone else and he deletes it almost right away). He thinks back and can’t actually remember what his last message to her dais, so he composes a new one.  
Hey, he writes, humming and hawwing to try to find something good to say that doesn’t make his intentions obvious. I guess I’m just asking how work went. I feel like we haven’t talked in twelve hours, when did we get so distant? He erases that last sentance, not wanting to let his humor get that close to suggestive.  
Because even though it isn’t suggestive, in a way it sort of is. Ben has never had a steady girlfriend; he’s dated a few times, took a girl friend of his to the junior seior prom last yer because she wanted to go and his mom wanted him to go. He’s been best friends with Mina for almost two years now and they’ve never let it border on romantic, because that’s not the sort of relatioship they’ve had. Sure, if pressed, Ben would say he wasn’t entirely against the idea, but they are online friends. They got way too close intellectually before they ever even posted pictures of themselves.  
They’ve never talked about it because, ben assumes, it’s too weird an issue for either of them to want to breech. Mina also had a boyfriend sometime last year.  
So instead he types I had kind of a sucky day, and looks over everything to make sure there are no misspellings before sending it off. That way, he thinks, it looks like he just wants to get his mind off of his own day, and not that he’s worried about the fact that she hasn’t been online.  
He gives himself an hour, of internet surfing and friend-request-denying and blog queuing before allowing himself to get worried over the fact that she still hasn’t responded. She should be back from work by now, should have changed into her pajams for the evening and lounging around the apartment while her rooommate’s gone, blogging up a storm.  
And if not she should have made some excuse for being offline. made an offhand comment about having a dae or needing to put in extra hours, or complained about IRL friends who need things like time to hang out.  
Ben tries to tell himself that he isn’t needy and desparate, that he isn’t forcing her to spend virtual time with him. He tellls himself that he is just legitimaately worried.  
He puls up his inbox again and scrolls down, down and down, all the way to the bottom, the earliest messages that he hasn’t deleted. There, he finds the comment, where they gave each other their cell phone numbers. Just in case of emergency! Mina typed. They didn’t want to be texing and talking on the phone all the time.  
Ben copis the number onto his phone and hits the button to send a text. Hope this doesn’t sound weird, he types, unfamiliar with the phone keyboard. he rarely ever has peole to text. But you haven’t been online all day and I got a bit worried.  
The messages sits there for a moment before he hits send, and then he does hit send and he moves out of his bedroom into the lviing room, with the phone, and tries not to worry.  
When there’s no immediate response, he turns to TV on and flips over to one of the newer episodes of Emerald Streams, still sitting in his DVR. His mom seems to be working on something in the dining room, and after a few minutes the intro plays and she calls out, “Hey, I do’t think I remember this episode.”  
Sometimes it takes Ben a moment to remember that his mom has actually seen some of the episodes, watched idly while working on her own things, and actually knows a little bit about this enourmous facet of his personal life. It feels a bit invasive for a moment before he remembers that he actually wishes there were peple who understood this facet of his personal life.  
“It’s a newer episode,” he responds, “I probably watched it when you were at work after school one day.”  
She makes a sort of understanding sound, and he can see that she’s keeping an eye on the TV while she works. Part of him wishes she wouldn’t pretend to like the things that he likes, wouldn’t pretend to be interested. Part of him wonders if she is really interested.  
At that moment, the phone buzzes. He has it on silent so his mom wouldn’t hear it. He fils with relief when he sees that its a repsonse from Mina, but then he opens the text.  
Ben? it reads. This is Mina’s roomate. She left her phone behind this morning when she left. She also hasn’t been back yet so I don’t know if she’s hanging out somewhere? Are you an online friend? it’s weird that she hasn’t been online at all.  
He considers what that means. One, that she hasn’t been seen by her roommate all day, and two, that her roommate understands the idea of Mina having online friends, and how weird it would be for Mina to stay offline for so long.  
He responds with a thank you and types, Yes, I am an online friend. I’ve been kind of worried. If you see her can you have her get ahold of me?  
He turns his attentions back to the episode. Maddie kills some sort of demon monster thing and the whole gang is impressed because apparently they haven’t learned by now that Maddie is boss. They’re also a bit worried because they’re stuck in the wrong universe and there needs to be some way to get out of here, especially since they’re on a mission to stop the desctuction of the stream system and they need to be somewhere else entirely.  
Ben glances over at him mom and she is still giving the TV half attention. Billy comes in a few minutes later, seaty and wearing a huge grin, and ignores both of his faily members to go for the shower instead. There is still no text back.  
By the end of the episode there is still no reply and Ben has gotten worried. From what he’s heard about this roommate, he fullly believes she would not reply bck if she had notihng especially to say, but he wishes she would anyways. He needs some sort of assurance.  
As the ending credits lay, Ben turns his head over the back of the couch and calls “hey mom?”  
“Hmm?”  
“Hypothetical question. Say someone wasn’t at school Monday, and they weren’t there the next day, and we didn’t know why they were gone and I was worried. What should I do?”  
“Some random kid? Why?”  
“Hypothetically. And someone I knew - but not Trey, because we talk every day and I could just call him to see if he’s sick?”  
His mom raises an eyebrow but things about it. She probably figures it has something to do with something he’s writing. “Well you could ask the teacher. The parents may have called the child in sick and the teacher should know. if not, and if it’s someone you know, you could call their parents.”  
Ben said nothing. That didn’t really help him in his situation at all. He had a way to contact Mina’s scell, which her roommate seems to be abl to anwer, and he had her school address, so he coukd write a letter or maybe call the school. But what would that accomplish?  
They have takeout for dinner, but Ben’s mom makes them eat together at the table so they can talk. Billy grunts through part of the conversation and Ben feels bad becaus hhis mind is not at the table. It rarely is but in this case he’s having an especially difficult time focusing on the questions his mom asks him.  
“aRE you OK?” she finally asks and it’s actually a challenge to answer.  
“I think so,” he says, not wanting to worry her. He glances at the clock and mentally moves the hands again.  
He excuses himself later, having eaten less than he normally would have, and takes both his cell phone and laptop to his room to see if there have been any updates. There are, but not on Mina. The internet is constantly updating - in the time it takes for the browser to refresh, there are hundreds of new changes just to local servers. The difference in the internet as a whole is incalculatble. A virtual butterfly flaps its wings on a website dedicated to pet adoption and the effect is felt far into the depths of the social media sea.  
The internet is trying to tell him something is wrong but only because thats what the internet is trying to do at any given moment of any given day. The internt is also trying to tell him that everything is a-ok and that a gif of a cat is the best thing in the entire world and that if you haven’t watched a certain science fiction british televison series than you are not really living. Ben has lived in this world long enough to be able to sift through all these messages and see what it realy there, and what that is is not Mina.  
he gets a text and half hopes Mina’s roommate is telling him that she is back. It is from Mina’s sell but the message reads Hey, it’s Mina’s roommate again. Apparently no one’s seen her today; I called her work and they said she didn’t show up.  
Didn’t show up. She went to bed and woke up and didn’t go online, didn’t go to work, didn’t see anyone or at least anyone who her rommate would know about. For all intents and purposes Mina has vanished and she hasn’t been gone twelve hours, as far as Ben can tell, but when you live on the internet time moves differenty.  
He sends a response, thanking ehr for letting him know and reminding the faceless rommate to let him know as soon as she hears anything. She actualy response back this time, telling him to do the same.  
The world continues to turn - Ben only assumes so because he is still breathing and gravity seems to be working fine, though I know this for a fact - and the digital spiders continue to crawl up and down digital threads and, ore importantly, there is a new episode of Emerald Streams airing tonight, and Ben doesn’t know if he wants to watch it.  
He’s wanted to watch it - it’s the new episode airing after a two week hiatus and he’s been excited and anxious for this night that whole time. He was going to log online and brag about being excited, and Mina was going to complain that she had to wait a whol three real-world hours before she could watch it. He was going to send her criptic IMs throughout the hour.  
Instead he lies back on his bed and mulls it over. His mom willl know something is up if she doesn’t come out of his room and watch the episode. He will also have to avoid the internet for a few hours, as there will be many people on his blog excitedly talking about the new episode.  
And then Ben remembers what he wrtote on his blog the day before. What is the point, he thinks. Spending an hour of my life stting in front of the television and staring at the screen and innputing information about this show. How does this affect my life, he wonders, how do I gain from this, grow from this? What is the point, because it’s not real. It’s fake. I am committing fake informatio to memory and I can’t even remember what year the civil war began on.  
Except, a tiny voice says, it isn’t fake. It’s information about another universe, for sure, but it isn’t fake information. It’s information the characters in the show themselves find helpful from time to time. It’s information Mina herself stated was important.  
And ben decides to get up, leave his room, turn the tv on, because it’s as if Mina herself told him to.  
It wasn’t actuallly Mina, of course. You know that. I know that especially because it was me. But it was Mina who told me to tell Ben to get up, and as much as we may tr to avoid it, it is Mina who drives most of the action in this story. I can’t ask her right now because she isn’t here, but if I could, she would robably confirm the fact that she feels a bit smug about it.  
Watching the episode, though, Ben was still distracted. He kept the phone nearby and the laptoop on the table, ready to beep him if he got any messages. He was so distracted that he almost missed it when Maddie, reading off a list of conspirators in a 19th century assassination plot, read off the name ‘Reuben Cartwright’  
He blinked, staring at the screen in semi-confusion as the scene goes on and Maddie continues to speak. It takes him almost ten seconds to remember to grab the remote and hit the pause button, rewinding the broadcast half a minute to confirm that she actually uses his real name.  
It could just be a coincidence, right? he thinks. It’s not like that’s a totally ucommon name.  
Except it is, in that setting. The rest of the names are more foreign sounding, his definitey stands oout. The chances that the one out-of-place name used in the episode are...  
They’re very small chances, Ben thinks. Of all the possible combnation of names in the world.  
The episode continues to play annd the characters continue on their journey and ben doesn’t know what to hink. It has to be some sort of sign, he thinks, it has to have been there for some sort of reason. Mina said the universe didn’t do things just randomly, and he doesn’t know that’s not true.  
He briefly entertains the idea that this has something to do with Mina, that she has inserted her self into the story somehow in order to drop him this clue, and then he abandonds the idea. this is fiction after all (the tv show, I mean; Ben’s meta-knowledge is still limited at this point).  
Then what could it be? Did Mina have something to do with the production of the show? Did she disappear to go edit a script secretly?  
That doesn’t make sense - this was filmed months ago. Maybe she just had her disappearance coincide with her previously editted clue.  
Except that doesn’t make sense either and nothing makes sense. This whole situation is insanely infuriating and he doesn’t know whether to be mad at Mina for putting him through this or intrigued for giving him this ARG to play (that acronym seems very appropriate, given the situation) or worried sickk because she has been kidnapped or may be dead and all he can do is muse on the fact that his name happened to be used in the episode tonight.  
The episode ends and he really doesn’t remember much about what happened except that his name was mentioned and the gang got to stop some impoortant person from being murdered. This was an impotant move in the meta-space they inhabit but it’s not real space, and Ben is starting to think very highly of ditching the imaginary world alltogether. It seems to have done something odd to the mind of a young college student who couldn’t tell the difference, who seems more troubled than she previously let on.  
There’s nothing from his cell phone, and refreshing his inbox shows him nothing new fro Mina. He checks his email as wll in case she decided to update him there. Obviously that’s fruitless.  
Eventually he decides to see if the internet, specifically the people on his blog, have anything else they want to say, even though he expects fully to be bored by their offering. His best friend, who he’s never met, has gone missing and can’t be found, and he has no clues to go one. No way to contact her family to see if they know anything. Nothing to do except wait and worry.  
Partway through scrolling he comes across a post made by Mina and his heart almost leapps out of his throat. It’s a random sketchdump, Drew these today, she’s writen, like no big deal, like it’s not important at all.  
He freaks out and doesn’t even look at the post, instead quickly sending her a private message asking her if sh’s alright, here she’s been, what hapened. It’s one thing to stay offline all day, he writes, I guess you have a right too that, but I texted you and your roommate answered, said no one had seen you. I was super worried.  
And then Ben actually sits there and wait for a reply that never comes. Waits ten minutes, then text her roommate again. I’m sorry, he types torturously slowly, but shhe hasn’t come back, as she?  
Wait ten mintues and theres another text reply. Sorry, no. I called campus police and they’re keeping an eye out for her but we can’t really do anything unntil tomorrow.  
It finally occurs to him to look at her post, and he does so. Four doodlles, all in pen and unedited, no real explanation, but then he sees it. In the tags for the poost, where she states that all the characters are from Emerald Streams, is her queue tag. She queued this post up, could have written it yesterday and accidentally added it to a post queue instead of posting right away.  
Ben geets a quick mental immage of Mina, ded, her blog queue so full that poosts continue to appear on her blog for a week, people commenting and enjoying it and slowly starting to wonder why she isn’t commenting back.  
Then he realizes that this was the only post she made today. Mina, who queued this post up, and yet it didn’t appear on her blog until (he checks the timestamp) just after Emeral Dtresms ended. If this was a proper queue there would have been posts all day. It wasnt queued, it was scheduled. She set this post to apear at a specific time, his specific time.  
If this isn’t a clue Ben decide he doesn’t know what is. That name might have been an accident, he’ll let that go, and this post apppearing at this time after she’s been missing all day? But the two happening together?  
It takes him five mintus to decide what to do, and another five minutes to muster up the courage to do it. It’s late, but not so late in California. He hits the buttons for Mina’s cell number, and then lets the phone ring.  
“Hello?” a hesitant voice answers after three rings.  
“H-hello, this is Ben. Is this Mina’s roommate?” He knows it isn’t her (thhough a small part of him still hoped she was playing a horrible game) because he recognizes her voice well enough by now. It’s been almost two years.  
“Yes,” the girl answers. ben realizes he doesn’t even know what her name is, isn’t sure if Mina ever told him. “Why exactly are you calling? There’s no ews, I would have texted - unless you have news?”  
“Sort of, he says, and he can’t stop his voice from shaking because he doesn’t like talking to strangers, doesn’t like talking on the phone in general, prefers to two not to coincie. “This is weird, I know, but, she posted on her blog just now.”  
“What?”  
“Not just now, I mean, a half hour ago.”  
“She’s OK? Did she say where she was?”  
“No, no. she posted, but it was just doodled, like nohing had happened-” He attempts to continue but the roommate interrupts.  
“She posted her doodled on her blog?”  
Ben stammers, “Uh, yeah. She does that all the time.” There’s no reply and for a second he knows that she is wondering why someone would take the time to post half-finished artwork on a public blog. That’s not how it works, he wants to answer her unspoken question, it’s a... you woouldn’t get it.  
He finally continues. “But she didn’t post it just now - or a half hour ago. it was a post, and it showed up on her blog a half hour ago, but it was ctually written earlier.”  
“How can you tell?”  
“Because... because all her posts have tags, and they get a special tag when they’re put into the post queue.” He can almost here the girl try to process this. He can almost hear her thinking ‘wow your weird internet things are so confusing’ and he wants to say ‘no, it’s just not easy to explain.’  
“Well, do you know when she wrote that...post?”  
“There’s no way of knowing. She could have written it months ago, or weeks, or this morning. She could have posted it immediately and just added that tag to fool me.”  
There’s a pause on the other end of the line and the girl finally says “OK, so this doesn’t really help us at all.”  
“No,,,” Ben starts to say but then something occurs to him. “These sketches she posted, though. Do you know where she keeps her skketched? In a notebook smewhere or-?”  
“In a folder,” she interrupts again, “Mina has a folder, and most of her sketches are on loose paper so she can put them on the wall or scan them - gosh now I know why, I guess.”  
“Can you check that folder?” Ben asks, “For the sketches she posted online?”  
“Sure,” cmes the reply. Ben can hear sounds of the gilr moving around the appartment, checking through their shared room. He hears the sound of paper shuffling, and then she says “I’ve got the folder, everything seems to still be here. How will I know which one is the new ones she posted.”  
“Um,” ben pulls up the page on his browser again. “I could describe them to you, if you don’t know how to get on her blog.” There is a silence, as if the girl is thinking ‘of course i dont know how to get to her blog, its not my blog.’ “There are three, one...one man, two women. I don’t know if they’d be on separate pages or the same. Black and white. Sort of dressed fancy.”  
There is some mores huffling, then “OK, that describes the top three pages. One of the chicks is carrying a sword for some reason?”  
“YEah,” Ben has to fight the urge to dive into a deep lecture on the character and her personality because he knows, were he in her position, that she doesn’t care.  
More shuffling, and then the girl speaks. “they’re all on separate pages but the first one, the guy, on the back it says ‘sorry’.”  
“What?”  
“‘Sorry’, handwritten, small etters in the corner. Looks like Mina’s writing.”  
Benn adds hat to his list of clues - he almost wants to write this down, make it a legitimate list. He feels like a detective almost and it doesn’t alleviate the wory he’s feeling. More rustling.  
“The second one... the second one, with the girl with the sword, says ‘kicking butt’.”  
Ben takes a longer pause for that. “Um, what? ‘Kicking Butt?”  
“Yeah, jsut that, same letters.” It occurs to Ben tat these may not be messages, but instead titles. The girl with the sword is Maddie, Mina’s favorite, whos MO throughout the story is general kicking butt and being the most awesome thign ever.  
“The last one says ‘Emeralnd Streams’. Thats that TV show Mina likes. She watches it on her laptop.”  
Ben doesn’t realize he is nodding along but there’s nothing really to sy. Titles, thats what they are, not messages. He’s back where he started and still has no idea what to thinkg.  
Except ‘Sorry’ doesn’t make any sense. He’s looing at the sketch on his computer and it isn’t a very ‘sorry’ imae. It’s Damien, Ben’s favorite, looking like he’s ready to get into a fight and not care about the consequences. Very much the opposite of ‘sorry’.  
“Do any of the other pages have word written on the back?”  
“Um... no. Dates, on most of them, not all, but there are no words. Just those three.”  
“OK,” he says, and doesn’t know what else to say. He desn’t want to hang up, in fact he’d prefer if there was some way he could turn this in to a brainstorming session, bouncing ideas off each other. If they were communicating online thats what this would have been, each message taking aa while to write and be recieved and not really interrupting their offline lives. Over the phone there is no delay in communication, everything he says will end up being what she hears, and that still sort of weirds Ben out.  
“Well,” the girl says. ben wonders if she’s feeling just as awkward about this as he is. “if that’s it...”  
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Um. Just, if you hear anything, or see anything, anything at all-”  
“Sure, sure,” she says, then pauses, “We’re going to the police tomorrow morning if she doesn’t show up. Me and a few friends. And we’ll be looking around her stuff to see if there are any clues. I might call again, and, uh-”  
Ben knew where this was going. “If the police want to talk to me,” he quickly cuts in, “I’ll be here, at this same number. There’s also my blog, where Mina and I usualy talk. I don’t know if you’ll be able o get into her computer, but if you can ther might be more information or clues there.”  
“hanks,” she says, and there’s another awkward pause.  
“Uh, thank you,” Ben decides to say, “for checking those sketches of hers.”  
“Oh sure.”  
In a friendlly conversation this is where the ‘talk to you late ye’ would go, but Ben actually hopes not to have to talk to her later, so he just throws in an awkward ‘bye’ which she returns and he hangs up before he can emarress himself further.  
It’s gotten really late by this point. Ben would like to stay up later, catching up with his blog and talking with inter friends, but he can’t bring himself to. He can’t bring himself to do anything other than worry.  
He decides it would be a good time to go to bed, and changes into pajamas, crawling under the covers and staring at the ceiling for a few minutes. His brain is too buzzed to sleep and short of taking something to knock him out he can’t think of a way around that. The clues he has so far swim around in his head and he remembers Mina talking about ‘waht if we get the chance to meet up’ and doesn’t know if he should be happy or angry to see her on his doorste the next day.  
He gets his book to distract himself, but after ten minutes he gives up. Ben turns to the back pages of his science college-ruled notebook, and starts marking out everything he knows so far. Trying to recall conversations. It’s easier to do when you hhave them written out in saved chatlogs and private messages.  
He scribbles on an entire page. What if we ever meet, would it be awkward, what if this is a science fiction and not a fantasy. Emerald Streams, visiting the very real fictional world. Sorry. Kicking butt. Wouldn’t it be cool. What if we could go and visit, meet the ccharacters, meet all the characters. What if this is a sci fi? Does this mean we have been wrtten? Are we a TV show somewhere? Whos writing us?  
Ben pauses. He remembers her saying that, saying that specificay. Who’s writing us? Is anyone writing us, Ben remembers asking. If we’re a story we have to be written somewhere. Ben liked the idea. He had pondered on it, thinking about someone much cooler than hi, much more interesting, reading about the life of a kid who spent his time reading about the lives of other kids. It’s very circular.  
Now Ben isn’t so sure. Now he imagines that if its a story there has to be conflict, has to be an antagonist. “And those generally try to kill you,” Ben says aloud, because the house is dark and quiet and even Billly is asleep and Ben doesn’t mind speaking aloud.  
If it’s a story than Mina’s disappearance is the plot. Finding her is the resolution. That means the inbetween wont be so easy, and there’s no assurance that she’ll be safe when alls said and done.  
I’m generally not a huge fan of spoilers but I’ll go right over Ben’s head to say that finding her is not the resolution. I mean, sure, if this was a shorter story, it could be. Every story has more going on after the ending. This particular telling of the story going beyond that particular ending, though. Maybe it’s just me, but that seems like it would have been a waste of an ending.  
Anyway, it’s stilll dark and late and Ben pulls open his laptop, turns the light setting down way low, and starts pouring through old chatlogs. He can’t remember everything she’s said but she didn’t just up and sdecide to go on a crazy journey to look for plot just this morning. She must have been thinking about it for a while. There must be more evidence about it someere.  
It’s 2 in the morning and Ben is finally starting to nodd off when he sees it. A conversation, just last week. He vaguely remembers Mina saying this but more to the point he remembers only half paying attention to the conversation. He remembers having this conversation while watchin a movie he hadnt expected to enjoy.  
We can’t just sit around, Mina typed and entered and Ben reads, waiting for our stories to catch up with us. We’ve got to figure out what our stories are and jump into them.  
Ben’s response was a half-aware But what are our stories? We’re just going to school and living life, not fighting unjust kings or going on long self-fulfillment ourneys.  
Characters go on journeys to learn about themselves, Mina had responded. We spend our entire lives learning about ourselves - we die not knowing everything threre is to know about ourselves. Our lives are one long, drawn out stories, that end in happiness and end bittersweetlly.  
That’s poetic, en had responded, and he groans at how rediculous he sounds when he isn’t paying attention.  
thanks, Mina had been gracious. but our stories dont have to be long and drawn out, right? Not all characters in fiction die not knowing much about themselves. We could have something good, and then a nice ending, and then an easy, hapy time.  
Unlikely, Ben slaps his forehead.  
Just on it’s own - Mina seems unpreturbed by his lack of attention. She is talking more for herself now than anything else. Not to hear his input on the idea but to see herself coiving, as it were, the idea, test out it sounds on her lips, or, in this case, fingertips.  
What we need, she says,, it to talk to the person in charge.  
Who? ben wrote and now thinks. Who’s in charge, God? Talk to God?  
God, sure, she typed, if he’s the one. The Allmighty Author, Le Auteur de la Stage,  
Hey I took French, Ben had types, isn’t it ‘l’auteur?’  
Regardless. If we can talk with the very Writer themselves, we can get this narrative moving, don’t you think?  
That’s not how it works. There must have been a commercial break because suddenly Ben is more lucid in his writing. When the gang from Emerald Streams visit a storyspace, it isn’t set up just how the writer of the boook or director of the movie set it up. If the writer is bored and wants something interesting to happen, they say it happens even if it doesn’t actually ahppen within the story-world.  
True, Mina responded. I’m taking a bit of freedom with this idea, and assuming that the ultiverse of reality isn’t the same as the multiverse as depiicged within this one fiction.  
Even if the whole idea of this fiction is to present the idea of a multiverse contained with in nerratives?  
SHUSH. In all caps. Even now Ben chuckles and hopes his mom isn’t such a light sleeper.  
The existential musings stio around that point, and ben starts to wonder if they, as a pair, waxed existential more often tha he had previously thought. “We are downright intereting,” he thinks to himself, “I can totally understand why someone might want to write our story down.”  
Except as soon as he says it he thinks about how ironic that statement is. He thinks of all the times he’s been boring and not worth hearing about at all and thinks, to himself but also to us, that no one would ever want to read his story.  
He finally dozes off later and wakes up. It’s almost ten in the morning - he quickly adjusts that to seven and reaches for his phhone. No text or voicemessage from Mina, or her roommate. And they’re college students, e doesn’t even know if they’re awake yet. Probably not.  
He ignores his laptop and heads towards the kitchen, grumbling about the inefficiencies of time zones.  
Hsi mom is relazing on her day off, and asks him how he slept, making sure to point out the length of his sleep though she does not realize when it had actually started.  
“Fine,” Ben mumbles. Billy is already playing some RPG in the living room and there is no breakfast on the table because the boys are expected to actually fend for themselves once and a while as mommy dearest treats herself.  
“Trey called a little while ago,” she says, not looking up from her book, “I think he’s coming over later.” Ben wants to protest but there is no point. He can’t grude his mom for not knowing to read his mind.  
Trey finally does show up just after noon, promises Ben’s mother that he already ate, “but thank you,” and practically drags Ben back into his bedroom.  
“Dude yoou never called,” he complains, setting his bag down by the door and settling himself in front of Ben’s laptop.  
“Yeah, yesterday was... weird.”  
“Hmm?” Trey says, logging into his game server. The laptop has his password saved already because Ben ahs no need to change it. “How so? Someone die?”  
“I hope not,” Ben almost mumbles. His friend looks up at him, suddenly worried that his joke hit too close to home. “Disappeared. Someone, disappeared.”  
“Oh shoot. Who?”  
“A, uh, a friend. Online.” As soon as he says that the seriousness is dropped from Trey’s face. “An online friend who I talkk to all the time.”  
“You think maybe he just didn’t get on at all yesterday? Most people are allowed to have their own lives, you know.”  
“Most people notify someone before dropping off the face of the earth.” Ben sneers back. “But, no, i... I don’t think she’d do that.”  
“OOOH,” Trey turns around quickly and Ben wishes he hadn’t said anything. “You mean a GIRL friend, a GIRL friend of yours online?”  
“She’s a girl, so what?” Ben tries to defend, but he knows where Trey is already.  
“You have an online girlfriend and you never told me? What, do you send each other kissy face emoticons and geek out about your boooks together?”  
“She’s not my girlfriend-”  
“Do you go on internet dates, eat fancy food together while webchatting and stream movies illegally while pretending to cuddle-”  
She’s not my gilfriend! A person is allowed to be friends with a person of the opposite sex and have it not be made a hgue deal!”  
Trey smirks because he is not buying it and Ben doesn’t kow what to do to change that “Not in my experience,” Teey says.  
“Well you have a very limited experiennce,” ben says, “You’re still in high school.”  
“So are you!”  
“Well I read. Which makes a huge difference to my experience level, I think.”  
“Ben I don’t think it works like that.”  
“ANYWAY” Ben says, louder than he’d intended. “she disappeared and I spent all day trying to figure out where she’d gone. Still don’t know - her friends are going to the police-” he checked the clok “-right about now, I think.”  
“You mean her real life friends.”  
“So I’m supposed to get a call,” Ben says, ignoring trey’s comment. “I don’t know when.”  
Trey says nothing, organizing something in the game he’s playing, and ben doesn’t know if Try has even paid attention to Ben this whole time. He finally mumbles, still staring at the screen, “dude that kind of sucks.”  
Ben looks over his shoulder and can’t tell if Trey is responding to Ben or reacting to something in the game. he assumes it’s he former and decides to take it.  
The next few hours are spent similarly - Ben pretends to be interested in the game and Trey may ot may not be pretending t be interested in Ben’s predicament. The afternoon waxes on and finally Trey says he has to go and Ben doesn’t know if he is happy about the lack of distraction when Trey walks out or if he’s going to miss it.  
There’s no hope of catching up on his blog now. The virtual world holds no call to Ben now that there’s trouble in reality. This may be a sign, he thinks, logging in anyway to check to see if there’s anything from Mina. Maybe this always would have happened. Maybe ths is the universe trying to tell him to stop wasting his time in fictional realms and focus on the physically tnagible.  
This isn’t the first time this has occurred to Ben. He’s had multiple episodes in the past, where he’s sat alone and wondered if life wouldn’t be so much more easier if he gave up this foolish idea that unreality is more interesting than reality. If he gave up the two episodes minimum a day and the books and even the story-based games, if he logged offline and stayed offline, talked with people in person or over the phone only, swore off movies of all kinds because how do they enrich his life at all?  
This isn’t the first time this has occurred to Ben and every time it does he tries to shake it off. What’s the point of life if not to have fun, he thinks. Why bother getting a job to support myself in the act of mindless waking and aowkring and eating and sleeping and repition? If I’m going to live I’m going to enjoy myself in the meantime.  
The air outside is brisk, not yet cold, so Ben decides t get the mail. The mailbox is up the street a ways, no more than a minute or two walk. He passes an older woman with a dog and gives a polite hello, then realizes he has forgoten the mail key and walks back.  
Most of the mail, when he returns to get it, is junk. Adds and coupons for srvices and businesses they don’t want or need. A few bills, a credit card application, an ad to an art school Ben regrets contacting years ago, and a small, semi-flat package.  
He doesn’t even look at the package at first, it doesn’t occur to him to. He dumps all the mail on the dining table for his mom to sort later, and the package slides a bit out. The first thing he notices about it is Mina’s name as the return address.  
It takes his brain a full second to process that but in that time his arms have reacted, snatching the package up off the table to look over it. Small and mostly flat, thin cardboard, shipping sometime this week or last in order t make it to his house by today.  
Yesterday, Ben suddenly thinks. Today is sunday, and they dont deliver mail on sundy.  
He quickly surpressed the meme the instantly rose to mind.  
It had been in the mainbox all day, sitting there while he stressed. He had no idea what it was though. Grabbing a kniife rom the kitchen, Ben ducks into his bedroom, closing the door and sitting down at his desk with the smalll package. The knife slides into the flap and cuts the tape easily, and it takes a bit of worrying to get the slips of papaer and plastic baggie out.  
Bens attention first goes to the baggie. Inside is a sot of bracelet thing - metal, of some sort, with odd colored beads, and he isn’t sure if this is hers, and she’s gifting it to him, or if it’s something she bought.  
Before e can stress over it he turns to the paper, unfolding it to reveal a full sheet of lines notebook ppaper that has been scribbled on. he noticed a doodle in the corner, and if she had zoned out while wiritng it.  
“Ben,” it reads on the first break, and there is a line break, “I’m hoping this gets to you on Saturday - if it’s before then this will make no sense whatsoever and you’ll probably be asking me all about it when you get online and it’ll be awkward. If it’s much later than I’m sure you’ll have had a proepr freak out and be worried sick and I’m afraid this might give you a heart attack. Sorry  
“But no, seriously, I apologizes! I did something... and it was sort of a douchey thing to do but it was a long time coming and it had to be done nad if it ws a success then... yay!  
“I am going to mee the Author, Ben. Don’t roll your eyes at me-” Ben hadn’t been “-, I was serious when I was talking about that! I am going to meet him, or her, and prove that everything here is real. It’s all real, in a metafictive sort of way. And I want you to come with me.  
See, the thing is, I’ve already figured out how to do it. As I write this, I’ve never tested it out, but I’ve almost got proof. a way to visit storyspace, paddle up the emerald stream, as it were. And I know it wil work because it’s already worked.  
If I’ve calculated correctly, this letter will get to you on Saturday [ate] and you should read it by the end of the evening. At that time I should already be gone - I’m visiting a man to get the machine. A machine Ben! To travel ictive space!  
“But it’s not precise, from what I hear. I can’t pilot it straight to your front door. To find you, I need to be able to lock onto your MacGuffin. That’s the bracelet in the package I’ve sent you. Don’t ask me why it’s called that, I’ve already forgotten, but it’s a MacGuffin and you have to put it on.  
“When you put it on the MacGuffin will register with the ship and I will be able to find you. Thats the eay part, the hard aprt is what we do after that. But just put on the MacGuffin so we can get started! And don’t freak out or anything, I totally know what I’m doing.”  
Ebn stared at the page. He really wasn’t sure if that was true. It seemed like Mina had no idea what she was doing. The whole thing seemed crazy and insne. He wanted her institutionalized - for a full ten seconds he considered it, not jokingly or ironically but seriously.  
He looked down at the bracelet again, and the first thing that occurs to him is that he doesn’t want to wear it. It looks corny, he things, cheesy, girly. I dont wear bracelets, I don’t wear jewelry. And he picks it up, takes it out of the bag, feels the metal and rubbs it between two fingers, alsmost sniffs it.  
Ben never prided himself at being difficult. His greatest accomplishment was his stubbornnes and he liked to think of himself as openminded. There are some people that are just impossible to work with for this reason. Ben has never considered himself one of them.  
Yet he takes ten wholw minutes to decide to put on that MacGuffin and just move on with the story. Usually when someone does this you ignore that fact, skip over it. Things need to move seemlessly, nice and compact, there’s no room for protagonists to be constantly humming and hawwing.  
But I want to make a point of saying that Ben takes ten minutes to decide to put on the stupid MacGuffin that I practically hand delivered for him for the sole point of moving on with the plot. Because Ben is difficult. From the start of the story he has not wanted to move n with it at all. He seems perfectly willing to sit on his thumbs the rest of his life, be boring, and while I’m all for that it doen’t make for a good protagonist. So if eventuallly he learns that I picked on his for being difficult, tough. He deserves it.  
When he finally does, the jewels on the bracelet light up, and Ben almost removes it again right away. He sort of pathetically worries about being seen, though he’s in his own rooom, and possibly being mocked for it. The light goes dull for a second adn then fades to amost nonexistant. It’s an interesting effect, Ben thinks, but he’s not really sure how it accomplsihed anything.  
It’s awkward, then, when five minutes later the MacGiffin flashes up brightly again while Ben is on his way to the bathroom. Luckily no one is nearby and he tries to hide it, cursing under his breath.  
“Embaressed?” he hears a familiar voice tease. Looking up, the room seems to be swimming, or running somehow, the ink and paint of reality melting slowly away. It’s a bit gross.  
“Oh sorry,” says the voie again and he can’t be entirely sure if that’s Mina, one because he can’t believe she is actualy here and two because he’s only ever heard her voice muffled thrugh the laptop speakers. “it’s a bit unplesent... at first. All the time really but you don’t know what to epect your first time. I can’t reallly do anything about that from my end, just... hold on.”  
reality as all but melted away not and Ben dropps to his knees, barely able to contain himself. He seems to be growing a headache and his stomach is feeling queesy and his legs almost feel like they’re being drained, definitely unable to support himself any more. The image as he can see it is sort of fades through a mint green color, like the world is being repaced with an algea-infected but otherwise pretty clear pool. It is gross.  
The floor never went away but it had turned gelitin under him. Now it feels to be solidifying again he brings his pals down to steady himself. Cool, like tile, unlike the carpet his mom had installed in their house. It’s a different place.  
“Hey Ben,” a voice says behind him, and he can practically hear her smie, snarky and yet slightly hopeful, a touch worried. He doen’t move his head and instead vomits between his arms.  
“Oh,” she says, obviously not what she was expecting. “Oh, um... are you OK?”  
“No,” he mumbles between lips that still taste gross. “Can you hand me a towel or somethin>”  
“I dont’... I don’t think there are any towels here?”  
“What kind of horrible place have you brought me to?” ben asks in all seriousness. He can’t bring himself to be joking while he clenches his eyelids shut in order not to see the stomach fluid mess below him. “Where they don’t have towels? How doesn’t have a towel? Those should be mandatory everywhere.”  
Mina doesn’t say anything but after a few moments hands him a piece of cloth. It seems to be a scarf. He wipes off his mouth and manages to push himself up, eyes still shut, and he feels her holding him steady.  
When he finaly opens his eyes there she is, Mina the girl from California, holding his arm and looking up at him expectandlt, a good four inches shorter than he. He didn’t expect her to be so short.  
“Hey,” she says, her smile hesitant.  
“Hey,” Ben agrees. “You seem to have discovered time travel or something. Sorry, I think I got vomit on your scarf.”  
“it’s not mine,” she says, then shrugs, “But it’s OK, I forgive you. Are you good?”  
She nods down at his legs and Ben realizes he stil hisn’t standing up properly. His legs still feel week but they’re getting their strentgh up, so he shifts on them, moves away from Mina in order to stand up fully without her support.  
“I think so,” he says. “You mind telling me what the heck is going one?”  
She tilts her head a bit. Ben could have sworn people only did that in movies and cartoons, not real life. “Didn’t you read the letter I sent you?”  
“That letter made no sense,” he says. “I have no idea what is going on and you’re doing something weird with metareality and I didn’t sign up for this.”  
Mina gives him an incredulous loook. “It’s great to see you too,” she says, “IRL I mean. Sorry I made you vomit.”  
“oh, Oh, no, it’s great to see you too, Mina.” They both smile, Mina happily and Ben awkwardly. “You know that it is, even if I didn’t expect it to be so soon.”  
“aww,” Mina says, and hugs him, Ben almost doesn’t hug her back. What are you doing, he thinks, whya re you hugging me, I don’t hug people I don’t knnow no matter how close friends I am with them, I’m an introvert, I dn’t do close contact.  
He does hug her bak, though, if much shroer in duration.  
“I still think this whole thing is a mess,” he says, then finally manages to look around. They’re in a room, cold, tiles, devoid on descriptors. The walllsare plain, bare, no windows, one door, everything a sick green sort of color, but only barely because the ambiant light that seems to be coming from nowhere isn’t lighting them up so well.  
“Welcome to the Emeral Streams,” Mina says, her rin faltering a bit. “Its not really anything like we imagined from the show. I imagine that was just sort of done up my the production company to look cooler.”  
“I don;t think the production compnay has eve been here.”  
“That too.”  
“I don’t think people are supposed to be here. This is...”  
“Metafictive space,” Mina says, mater-of-factly. “The space between the tangible elements of fictive space, to be a bit more previse.”  
“This is still crazy.”  
“I’m also not entirely sure this is real,” Mina looks around the room with a worried expression. “If i had to guess, I’d say this is just a physical holdingplace in order to make metafictive travel more logical. I think we could probably just imagine ourselves in another reality and poof, it would be so.”  
“Like Alice in Wonderland,” ben says, reality shifting around us. A crazy dream. Whats through the door?” he nods in the direction..  
“The bridge,” Mina says, grin returns, and opens the door, leading him out. The next room is larger, silver toned and covered in screens, moniters, a large control panel with dials and buttons and lights. Ben is impresssed.  
“It’s like an actual bridge,” he says, “Like a spaceship. Mina, wheere did you get a spaceship?”  
“It’s more like a metafictiove travel... ship? And I stole it - shhh, don’t tell/” She actually puts aa finger to her lips.  
“You STOLE it? How do you STEAL a metaficgtion spaceship, Mina? Who did you even steal it from?”  
“The guy who stole it from the person before him. All I had to do was get in and pilot it away. I couldn’t have managed it if I didn’t have the narrative’s permission.”  
“What?”  
“The narrative, if I wasn’t allowed to take this machine than something would have gone wrong.”  
“Mina, I don’t think that’s how reality works!” Ben says indredulously. There is a part of him that is suddenly reminded again of the fact that Mina is here, standing in front of him, and he’s excited, and the rest of him thinkss this whole situation is crazy and someone or other has to take some sort of medication.  
Of course Mina is actually wrong. Metanarrative can’t force you to do anything or deny you the ability to do narrative. Despite being a protagonist, you don’t actually have control of the story, and the story itself isn’t a living entity that controls you back. The story, if we were to put things as simply as possible, is a public diary. The diary skips over details that are boring and maybe hghlights things that didn’t feel so impotant at the time, but it onlly ever tells the truth as local reality saw it to be.  
Which is a long way of saying that reality is independant and fiction is just a way of connecting multiple realities. It’s so much easier and more interesting to visit a world that has been recorded as fiction than to visit a world no one has ever thoight of before.  
“Whatever, Mina says, “I took it, and I think he expected me too, an then I tried to find yu but you woudn’t put the stuid macgiffin on so I’ve spent the last day or so - I can’t keep track of tim in here - just wandering around, tring to get a handle on how this thing works>”  
“yeah...” ben says, “I didn’t actually get the mail Staurday.” Mina looks sideways at him like she can’t believe him. “I meant to, i think, but I was too busy worried about the fact that you’d disappeared.”  
She raises an eyebrow. “You were worried I’’d disappeared? Didn’t you think I’d just not logged on for the day? Was my absense so distressfull?”  
Ben shrugs and is embaressed. “I don’t know,” he says, “It’s not like you to do that. I thought maybe something had happened. I... I ended up texting you.”  
Mina quickly checks her pocket. “Shoot,” she mumbles, “that’s what I forgot. I knew I’d forgotten something, I always forget something.”  
“I ta;led to your roommate. She said you hadn’t been at work. We were worried you’d been kidnapped or something.”  
“All this,” mina sighs, “and you didn’t bother to ge the mail?”  
“I didn’t actually think you would have sent me a bracelet as a peace offering.”  
“NNot a peace offering,” and Mina smiles again, “Look.” She drags him over to the conntrol panel, and starts sowing him dials. “this screen here, with the grid? Apparently it tracks the position of the macguffins, as long as they’re activated. There seems to be hundreds or something, but this specific one-” She points to a certain area of the grid, currently lit up “-is this one, yours. Once it lit up I could lock onto your location and pull you in.”  
“it kind of took a while,” Ben says offhandedly, remembering, as he scans over the strange instruments.  
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t expecting to be waiting so long. My eyes weren’t glued to the screen all day. “  
She spent a while explaining other dials and gadgets within the console. “This one choses the universe,” she would say, turning one huge knob around an axis with thousands, it seemed like, diferent notches around the outside. “And these dials here indicate the time,” she says, showing a large string of numbers in the center that changed as each new notch was hit.  
“Presets,” she answers when Ben asks why everything is changing. “The man I got it from, had every universe preset to a certain time or date, so when he visited it wasn’t just in the middle of no time, where ntohing is going on. This is a location indicator,” she continued, “I have no idea how it works expect that they’re mostly preset as well.”  
Ben thinks about this for a while and Mina fiddles with some switches and continues to talk. “Wait,” he finnally says, “If we show up at exactly the time/place he has preset, wouldnn’t be show up jsut as he showed up, when he last visited some of these places?”  
Mina furrows her eyebrows. “Oh yeah,” she says, “we probably would. Well have to move everything up just a bit before we land donw anywhere.”  
“And speaking of landing down - where, exactly, are we?”  
Mina looks confused. “I told you, Metafictive space.”  
“This entire ship?”  
“Exists inbetween fictive realities. it has no fictive-physical presence.”  
“How did you get on?”  
“I have the key,” she says, ignoring him mostly as she fidles with more dials and then stands up. “Look, I’ll show you.”  
She drags Ben back into the other room, which has somehow in the past ten minutes become even more nondescript than before. The walls seem to have transfered to a sort of greyish color, and there’s no more vomit on the floor. This raises a question that Ben doesn’t get the chance to voice, as Mina hits a small lightswitch by the closed door and the room begins to melt.  
Ben instantly reaches out for her, grabbing her upper arm as he tries not to freak out.  
“Don’t worry,” she says, a sort of laugh in her voice.  
“Don’t worry?” Ben almost wans to shout because of course he’s worried and he can’t feel the floor moving beneath him or hear any angry winds howling around them but he feels like they should be there. The absense of the normal indicators of danger are in themselves frightening.  
“You’ll get used to it,” Mina says, not the first time. Ben doesn’t realize he has his eyes closed until Mina says “look” and then he opens them, looking around.  
They’re not in the same room. They’re not in any room, actually, they’re in the middle of a field, grass at their feet and trees in the distance. The sky is blue. And there are two moons visible.  
“Where are we,” ben says, not letting Mina go.  
“No clue,” she replies, and a large grin spreeds across of face uncontrollably.  
“You have problems,” Ben says. She looks up at him then and sort of loosk disappointed. Like what he ahs said has really hurt her feelings.  
“This isn’t normal,” ben tries to backpeddle. He lets go of her arm. “Teleporting. Teleportation. Living like this is not normal.”  
“I don’t want normal. I want the source.” Mina does a hand gesture, as if she can reach for the source, whatever it is right there in front of them. “I want to see the beginning just to see it, and visit a few plaes inbetween maybe, look at the end if it’s there, find the boundry of reality. So I stole a machine and rn away with it.  
There’s a slight pause. “It’s not normal,” she says, “It’s sci-fi.”  
Ben looks around. He thinks he sees a village off in the distance, feields, a few cattle or maybe hoorses. “This doesn’t feel very sci-fi,” he says, “this feels like a period piece. swords and sorcery a best.”  
“Maybe it is. I dn’t know.”  
“You don’t know what story we’re in?”  
“Nobody knows what story they’re in” she says sagely, then catches the look on his face. “No, no, I don’t know where we are actually. Np.”  
Ben can feel his lungs cotracting. He can feel himself, not yet hyperventaliting but the feeling starting to grow. He glances around again and everything in trees and grass and his legs feel shaky, like they’re made of week wood and they can’t support his weight again.  
“We’re going to die,” he mumbles. Suddenly he can talk louder than a mumble.  
“What? Ben, we’re fine, what’s wrong with you?”  
“What wrong with you?” he tries to say indignantly but he still can’t do anything but mumble, his lungs are so tight. He’s trying his best not to fall or to catch onto Mina’s arm again. “We trapped in an alternate universe and there’s no electricity and everyone going to think we’re witches and burn us and we can’t escape because you pushed us off some stupid time machine and you don’t know what you’re doing at all and I don’t know what I’m doing here-”  
Mina grabs Ben by the shouders and tries to look at him, which would be easy if his vision wasn’t swimming. “We are not going to die.” She doesn’t say that, at this moment, it occurrs to her that they might die. If some poetic moment presents itself some time in the future, the narrative might decide to off them for the narrative beauty of it. SHe makes a silent vow nnot to let any poetic moments present themselves.  
“We are not going to die,” she repeat, “We’lll be fine, I’ll take us back to the ship right now - look, look.” She holds out the necklace she is wearing. On it is a key, or a key pendant, made of a cheap metal, but next to it is a gemstone, like the ones on Ben’s MacGuffin, not from Earth. She tries to show him the gemstone and he tries to nod. She presses it, like a button, and then nods at him, tries to calm him as the unexplored possibley-fantasy world around them melts away, dissolves slowly, is finally replaces by the ondescript room.  
Ben does not vomit.  
The room is back to a sickkly green color. The still adjusted part of Ben’s brain woders if that’s the normal color for it to be when returning from a world. He begins to calm down a bit, enough to be able to speek norally again, and says “get me out of here.”  
I can do that,” Mina says, nodding, as if talking to a child. “I can do that, hold on, one second.” She slowly releases him, slowly backs away, slowly opens the door, leaves it open, and rushes to the control panel.  
Ben staggers over to the doorframe and clutches it to steady himsel. He tries to watch as she hits a few buttosn, moves a few dials, adjusts a number setting, then rushes back to him.  
“OK, we’re going back, I promise.” She gently pushes him back into the room, shuts the door behind them, and flips the switch again. Be hadn’t noticed it had been returned to it’s original seting.  
The wrld slowly melts and it doesn’t help to calm him down at all but he tries to go along with it, tries not to vomit or fall over or let himself lose any more control over himself. The multiple teleportations seem to be more accostumed.  
They end up outside somewhere again, but in Ben’s neighborhood. He recognizes the street - there’s is mailbox over there.  
Slowly, deliberately, he steps off the curb onto the shoulder of the street and sits down. Mina sits next to him.  
“So,,,” she says. Ben opens his mouth to apoligize but then says nothing. He isn’t sure whose the one whose supposed to be apologizing here.  
“I’m sorry,” Mina finally says. I think I kind of pushed this on you? Without asking or giving you a heads up. I, uh, I guess I thought you would be interested and would think this is all cool...”  
“It is pretty cool,” Ben says in his normal voice, “I think I’m just... going to take a bit longer to get used to it. Than you, apparently. It’s, ah, it’s a bit much.”  
“Yeah,” Mina does that laugh-through-your-nose thing, and kind of looks away. They sit there in silence for a few minutes while Ben tries to wrap around everything that’s happened and Mina trie to decide what ehr next move should be - she ahdn’t really planned on this - when it occurs to ehm both simulatenously that they are sitting next to each other on a suburban new york street, no longer separated by hunreds of thousands of miles, towers of servers, and two bright screens. They look over at each other, and Ben grins sheepishly.  
“Hey,” he says, and she smilles back.  
“Hey.”  
“You’re much shorter than I expected IRL.” He hopes his vocalization of acronyms will highlight his joking tone.  
Mina frowns but her eyes are still plesant and she has gotten the joke. “Well thank you,” she says in mock-sarcasm. “You’re much whiter than I thought ou’d be IRL.” It’s another joke, a reference to their first time they’d shared pictures online, before their irst cideochats. Ben had done his best not to mention the fact that he hadn’t realized she was Indian, and Mina had come out and turned that on him, pretending she didn’t realize Ben what a caucasian name. He muses on the fact that she’s always been very good at breaking the ice.  
“I do what I can,” Ben says, “staying indoors, never doing any work, keeping the windows shut to block out the scary sun, you know.”” They both start to laugh, and Ben raises a hand to shielf his eyes. “Speaking of-” he starts to suggest that they go inside somehwere, or at leat in the shade, off the street, when a voice cals out somewhere ese.  
“Hey! Ben!” He recognizes it as Trey’s voice. Ben stands up, Mina following, and sees Trey, walking a pacificed looking golden retriever down the sidewalk up the street. The two speed up to reach them.  
Before they get there, Ben turns to Mina and whispers “I apologize for my RL friends.” She gives him a look, part unsure what he means and part chiding him for it.  
“What are you doing outside?” Trey asks when he reachers Ben and Mina, unwittingly completing the joke, “And who’s this?”  
Ben sighs a little and gestures vaguely at Mia. “Trey, this is my friend Mina. Mina, this is Trey. And Spot.”  
Everyone present takes a moment to look down at the spotless dog, who sniffs at some weeds and ignores everyone right back.  
Then Trey looks up at Mina and sticks out his hand, a gesture Ben finsd a bit unexpected. “Hello there,” he says, “Mina? The same Mina I was hearing about yesterday?”  
“That depends,” ben says, “What day is it today?”  
Trey chuckles because he thinks it’s a joke, but Mina pipes up and says “If everything ran smoothly today is Sunday, afternoon.”  
It occrus to Ben that there is another version of him, still at home while Trey is out walking his dog. What would hapen if he meets himself? Will that cause some sort of paradox, rip the space-time - or metafictive space-time - continuum?  
He wont found out because he isn’t going to meet himself, but it’s somethig to think about.  
Trey is giving them a funny loook, though Ben can see the very moment when he decides to hake that comment off and move to the next most obvious thing to say.  
“So,” he says, looking at Mina again, “You don’t seem very fake.”  
“Oh, I’m not, I assure you,” she replies with a smile that Ben recognizes as devilish.  
“I never said she was fake-” Ben starts, but is cut off bby Trey.  
“No, you didn’t say that exactly, but you said she was an onnline friend and that usualy signas ‘fake’ in my experience.”  
“Maybe in your experience,” Mina says, with the same smile, “Other people actually know how to make friends online.”  
“So,” Ben quickly says, trying to change the subject, “It’s great to see you Trey, I’ll let you get back to your dog.” The dog was, at the moment, sniffing Mina’s shoes, almost just to gie itself something to do other than flop down on the floor.  
“Wait, wait,” Trey said, realizing he is being pushed away, “You said Mina was online, you said she lived across the country, and you said she disappeared mysterously - and now she’s right here?”  
“I am right here,” Mina says, “Right here.”  
“Did you run away to come see your-”  
“No,” Ben says, cutting him off, “No, this was just a coincidence.”  
“Not really, MInna begins to sya, and Ben can feel the conversation getting away from his control.  
“How about,” he says quickly, before Trey can reply but not before Trey can smirk, “You just go, Trey, finish waking Spot, Mina and I will keep talking? Hmm?”  
“What?” Trey says, pretnding to be offended, “are you trying to get rid of me?”  
“Yes.”  
“Oooh,” Mina says, unexpected. Her expression seems to suggest that she’s just picked up on something, and Ben innwardly groans. “You,” she says, pointing at Trey,” must be one of those misogonists who things men and woemn can’t be friends without there being something deeper-” she does a hand gesitre that dosn’t really make sense, intended to suggest depth “-involced, right?”  
Trey looks a little taken aback, like he’s never been pegged so quickly or maybe never been called a mysogonist. Miht not know what that means, actually. “I dot-”  
“That actually makes sense,” She says, nodding sagely, “you are a dog person after alll.”  
Spot seems to hear his species refered to and looks up.  
“What does tha have to do with it?” Trey asks. Ben wants to ask too much he suspects Mina is onnly saying that for the sake of making a jab, and not thaat sshe actually believes all dog people are mysogonists. He is correct - mina may be a flawed charcter but she is definitely not narrow minded.  
“Well, it was nice to meet you,” Mina says, nodding dismissively, but Ben and I have to be off now, we’re sort of working on a project and it is takking a while.”  
“Whoa, whoa, you’re not getting rid of me that wasily,” Trey says incredulously, even though he doesn’t know what that word means either. “Something’s weird going on here-”  
“What if I say it’s personal?” Ben asks. “Not, that, kind of personal, just something we can’t be talking about with everyone.”  
“I’m not everyone, but I can respect that. It’s cool. I don’t have to know your every little secret of yours.”  
“Ben’s lieing,” Mina suddenly says. “He doesn’t want to tell you because he thinks you’ll think we’re mentally deranged.” Ben shoots Mina a look but she isn’t sure if its a ‘shut uo’ look or a ‘what the heck are you talking about’ look so she ignored it.  
“What”  
“I’ll think of something.” She hits some coordinates on the navigation and stands up. For a moment she wonders if she should stop sitting down every time she tkes the controls, as she just has to stand up again a minute later.  
Within a few minutes they were standing back on the sidewalk, slight breeze, Spot on his leash again and looking slightly sleepy, as usual. The sun was probably a bit lower in the sky but Ben didn’t notice because he doesn’t really pay attention to things like that.  
“So,” Mina says awkwardly.  
“You guys are ame,” Trey says, turning his back ont he pair. “Same place, tomorrow morning, yada yada, bye.” He walks away, Spot somewhat reluctantly following. He gives Mina a mourning look as if hers is the presense he’s missing the most. Mina raises her eyebrows at the dog, or maybe Trey, Ben doesn’t know.  
Ben watches his friend go and says nothing because there is nothing to say. He finally turns to Mina and repeats the same thing Trey said. “So, here, tomorrow morning.”  
“Yeah.”  
“I guess we dont have to set a specific time, you can just see us.”  
“Yup.”  
“So...” he trails off and the two dont quite look at each other because in all their time as friends they’ve never really looked at each other. Mina has looked at the caera and Ben exaimned her photos, Ben looked at a camera once or twice and Mina examined his photos. They both looked at their moniters, just below their webcams, never meeting the others eye though they tried, instead forced into a downard spiral of visibility.  
In fact, Ben realizes, theyve practically spent and entire day together, wandering around weird science fictional machines and visiting anrratives that were not their own, and in that whole time Ben isn’t sure if they’ve actually ooked at each other in the eyes, straight on, like normal people are apparently suppposed to do. Hes glanced at her a lot and shes glanced at him and they’ve laughed and joked and acted comfortably beause they are friends even if this is the first time they’ve met but he doesn’t want to seem like he’s staring and neither does she and its a very awkward setup.  
:Can I hug you?” mina finally asks. Ben looks down at her eyes and she’s loooking at him and his first insticnt is to glance away again - appear unthreatening - but he doesn’t.  
“huh?”  
“I know it’s weird - I’m not really big on hugging myself, it’s awkward, btu I feel like that’s kind of what you’re suposed to do in these sorts of situatins?” The statement ends with an influx so Ben can tell that, had she been typing, she would have added the question mark we can see even though it wasn’t a question. The corner of his mouth turns up because this is jut like the Mina he’s gotten to know on the other side of that virtual wal.  
“Uh, sure,” he says, and awkardly moves his elbows out as if to initiate. The hug is awkward, not too close and maybe just a centimeter too far apart to be normal. They both try to make sure their arms are arounnd each other long enough, not just a quick not-squeeze, and it ends up being exactly one second longer than either of them would like. They are not used to hugs at alll. They pull apart and Ben half-smiles.  
“It was great to sede you,” Mina says.  
“You too,” Ben agrees, and then laughs, “Even though it was wildly different from how I thought our irl meeting would be.”  
“The dog was unexpected,” Mina laughs.  
“I was thinking more the whole metafictive space travel thing, but yeah, that too. I had no intention of you ever meeting Trey. He’s a bit...”  
“...yeah.”  
“Um,” ben once again had no idea what to say - he’s a bit stunted like that. He wasnted to ask her, frankly, what she thought, If she was dissapointed. If she was impressed at all. If she thought he was cool or if she regreted having him come along with her.  
They parted with few words. It was easier, they both thought to themselves, to talk when there was a scren in front you you. Ben stood back, outside of the radius Mina prescribes, and watched as she pressed her button on her necklace, watched as she dissolved from existance, and the air seems to rush to fill in that spot. He wonders vaguely what happened to the air they displaced when they first appeared.  
Then Ben stands there for a few seconds and waits to see if anything else will happpen. He doesn’t know but Mina, when returns, watches him. She flips uo the numbers on the timestampt to watch what he does after she leaves and is a bit touched to see how long he stands there ebfore finally turning to go home.  
His mom doesn’t say anything when Ben returns to the house. Ben can hardly remember what had happened before he disappeared; I can hardly remember what last happened before he disppeared. His mother, who didn’t even know he had disappeared, should be confused to see Ben coming into the house when she never saw him leave, but she chalks it up to her being unaware and begins to ponder her life choices. She does this once every so often.  
Billy is playing something on the main TV and looks up when his brother comes. he calls something out, they have a short conversation, and Ben goes to get something to eat. He hadn’t eaten in hours H’es hungry  
Latere, sated, he goes to his room and sees his laptop sitting ready on the end of the bed. He’d almost forgotten about it. He wakes it up, types in the password, and logs onto his blog. Meanwhile life has gone on. Digital life, as it is, but real life just the same. Ben scrolls down, laughs at a few jokes, queues up a few of the more intriguing posts. He visited a ruined wasteland hardly and hour ago and yet it doesn’t take one moment to completely change the mindet of a person ike Ben.  
Ben spends a while on his blog but makes a pact with himself not to bother trying to catc up. He feels like he’s been gone for days and he hasn’t really caught up for over twenty four hours, so it’s a good plan. He scrolls through, noting that this acter was photographed in that city and apparently the new episode for this show he doesn’t watch aired, and the fandom is sort of freaking out about what happeed.  
After a while he opens a new ab and visits his fanfiction website, then sees the unfinished draft of the story he was working on earlier. He immediately thinks of a new paragraph to add, and another, and pretty soon he is in hi pajams, lying in bed typing, and he doesn’t go to sleep for another hour, though he’s still much earlier than planned.  
Ben’s mom knocks on his door around eleven in the evening and checks in on him, and is surprised o see him zonked out, laptio still sitting over his middle. She closes the lid, moves it to his desk so he wont damage it at niht. She covers him with a blanket andswells with emotion at seeing her little boy, mostly grown up now, still unwittingly willing to ecieve her hlep.  
When Ben wakes up he has turned over, thrown the blanket off again. The last wisps of his dream fade as he sits up, rubbing his eyes. He tries to remember it, and all he can recall is that he starred as a character in a movie, not his favorite but on his fandoms list, and somehow they had crossed over with the book he was reading for class. Ben isn’t sure how that hapened. He sturgggles to remember what even happened to him the day before, then quickly grabbes his phone to check the time.  
An hour earlier than he usually wakes u - thanks to the factt hat he went to bed four hours earlier than he ususally goes to sleep. There’s not much to do, so he turns on his laptop again and catches up with eveything that happened last night.  
There are no messages for Mina - he wonders what she has been doing. He decides to ask her, despite that not usually being how he operates, and the fact that he will forget to ask by the time he sees ehr again.  
There is a message from another friend though. Ben ponders on how his Friendship with ina has always been so much stronger than his friendship with his other online friends. He ponders online friendship in general, it’s pretty existential, I could go on for pages about it, but that gets a bit boring so instead we’ll skip ahead, to the time when Ben notices that his mother is awake.  
Hearing her wandering about the house, Ben checks the time again and realizes he need to get ready. He is pretending to be ready for school, prtending that he is walking today because he needs to meet up with Trey early and pretending that his backpack is full of homework and textbooks and not etra food, extra clothes, and a few things he imagines will keep him busy or entertained when Mina’s adventures inevitably go out of hand.  
He fillls his backpackk with those things and straps his shoes on, heading downstares. his Mother is surprised when shes ees him - she is still in her bathrobe, starting a pot of coffee before work.  
“You’re up early,” she says. Ben gives his practiced excuses and is pleased to see his mother believes him easily. He sets about helping her make breakfast - they don’t always eat breakfast together, usually because Billy gets up with just enough time to eat and Ben would rather spend that time in front of his laptop, but his mother always tries to prepare something that wuld be easy to grrab anyays.  
This mornnning, htough, they actually eat together at the table, Billy still asleep, mom with her coffee and newspaper and Ben pouring himself orange juice and thinking that she has no idea what he is doing today/ He doesn’t even know what he’s doing today - for all Ben knowsn, he’s never going to come home. Its a tought hes been avoiding but when he thinks it he becomes sad, wondering what his mom would do if he disappeared, wondering what she would become if he never came back.  
Billy he doesn’t become so worried about thoough because billy was sort of a last-minute character inclusion. Also brother to brother relationships at this age, y’know?  
Ben finally leaves though, waving to his mom as she closes the door behind him, and heads across the neighborhood to find the place where he has promised to meet up with Trey. When he gets there, his friend is already waiting.  
“What, no dog?” Ben asks.  
“Good mornign to you too,” Trey says, shivvering in the same jacket he wore yesterday. ben is pretty proud of himsef for the sweater he has on. It has always seemed to be just warm enough when hes worn it without being too warm. “Yeah, no way am I bringing spot along on this thing again. He’s probaby pee in the time machine and then we’d have to live with that smell since that thing doesn’t eally exst.”  
Ben decides on everal things of which not to comment on, and instead settles on saying “I’m sure Mina will miss him, though. He was a lucky charm or something, right?”  
“I’m not bringing my dyslecis dog along on your field trip just to impress your internet girlfriend turned real.”  
Again, Ben decides on serveral things to ignore and says “I don’t think you know what dyslexic means”  
Trey huffs and they wait around about another fortyfive seconds before Ben sees the green room start to materialize around them. He was almost starting to think it hadn’t been as sickly green as he remembered. It was and is.  
Mina half-appears at the door that is only half there, and half-grins - but a real half grin, from ehr perspective, being that Ben can only see a quarter of it. She also shouts ‘Good morning!’ at the boys, and each syllable gets progressively louder and less muddled sounding until the boys are finally stanfing in a fully formed room, the other visible through the door being Mina,  
“Hello,” Trey responds with a yawn on queue, “You’re ridiculously perky. Dont you realize how early it is? it’s illegal to be this perky this early.”  
Mina bites back a lecture on the ridiculousness of reerencing time to someone who has been traveling through a time machine for an undisernable amout of time. Should be count time local to Mina or time local to the universe?  
“Good morning,” Ben says, “how much sleep did you get?”  
Once again Mina feels the need to lecture on the fruitlessness of asking about time related questions but she realizes that isn’t fully needed in this instance. “I wasn’t exactly countin,” she asya, “but it was enough. I hope you guys are well rsted too, we’ve got a big non-chrologically day ahead of us!”  
“When we’re done,” Trye asks, “You’re not going to drop us off at the same time, are you?” They’re following Mina into the ohter room at this point “Because I had a lot of homework I just didn’t bother to do and I’d rather not have to go through another school school day after visiting post-apocalypptic worls again.” IT’s at this point that Ben finally remembers the essay he was supposed to write. He grimaces and nods in agreement with Trey’s suggestion.  
“Deal,” Mina says, “Not doing homework is something I can always relate with. But I was thinking not post-apocapylse today. I want to visit another story type than that.”  
“First person shooter?” Trey asks, hopeful but doubtful.  
“No of course not. Romantic comedy.”  
Trey groans. A real, ‘uggh I can’t be;ieve yu just said that’ groan, not an inward groan as might be used when trying tno to offend the other person. “I can’t believe you just said that,” he says.  
“Everyone has to have their guilty pleasues. And besides, it would be especially easy to check to see if we’re changing the narrative or not.”  
“How so?” Ben saks, trying not to comment on Mina’s narrative choice one way or another. Secrretly, he enjoys to occasionally romantic comedy as well. Not his favorite genre of film but they’r fun to watch and get causght up in without having to devote too much effort in the lot and as someone who loves wl thought our storeis the occassional pulp is nice, as a sort of fictive breather.  
“If we know how they get together in the end,” Mina says, now with a wicked grin, “We can just keep that from happening.”  
“Youre pproposing we split up a famous fictional couple?” Ben ased, unbelieving.  
“Can’t realy split them up if they’ve never been together. I’m proposing we keep a famous fictional couple from getting together.”  
“Awesome,” Trey says, cutting off Ben’s reply of ‘but tha’s the most evil thing we could possibly do’ or something like that. He hadn’t really fully formed the thought yet, but it does seem like possibly one of the meanest things he could think of to do.  
“But they’re a famous fictional couple for a reason,” ben says, “They’re meant to be together, they’er perfect for each other. They belong together and we’re just going to ruin that?”  
“Come off it,” trey says, punching his friend softly in the shoulder, “I didn’t know you were into sappy things like that.”  
“You don’t even know who we’re breaking up,” Mina says. She pulls up a backpack she has sitting on the floor by her chair - obviously she had the same idea Ben had. the same idea Trey missed out on. Ben noticed earlier that his backpack was looking just as empyt as it usually does, or even moreso with ack of notebooks.  
From her bag, Mina pulls out a DVD. It’s in a boz set, for discs in one, from the first season of a television show that isn’t Emerald Springs ubt might just have been Ben’s favorite before he found Emerald Springs. The show is not a romantic comedy, not in its core nature, but it is comedic, and like most stories intended to appeal to a mass of people, there is a major romantic subplot involving several of the main characters. In fact, the only hcaracters who don’t have romantic woes and successes throughout the show’s time are the two married ones.  
Ben’s eyes light up when he sees it, though, because he knows exactly what it means. “My OTP,” he practically whispers reverantly. Mina’s replying grin confrims his suspicion.  
“Excuse me, what?” Trey looks between the two, seeing that something is going on but not sure what it is.  
“We’re going to-?” Ben starts, still not sure he can believe it. Mina is just nodding encouragingly.  
“We’re going to break up Jane and John, Ben. We’re going to do it, you and I and Trey just because he’s here, and we’re going to get John and Rooxy together.”  
“Can one of you tell me what’s going on?” Trey tries to cut in again. “Who are we breaking up, and why? And what’s OTP?”  
“One true pairing,” Mina responds, setting the DVD set down on the console table. “It stands for one true pairing. When there are two characters who you want to egt together, they are a pairing. A pair of characters who should be hooking up, and when they are the pairing you are most involved with in the entire show, or book or whatever, they are your One TRUE Pairing. The ship that will never sink no matter how many fictional canon’s shoot at it ebcause your headcanon is supreme protector.”  
“I did not unnderstand that last part at all.” Trey says, shaking his head. “And I only think I understand what you’re talking about? I never really paid attention to Ben’s fandom things.”  
“And ben never really paid attention to your fandom things so I guess it all evens out/”  
“No,” Trey says with a laugh, “I don’t really do fandom things. That’s not my style.”  
Mina gives him a look. “You have a series of video games you will never stop talking about. Ben tells me you hccat with online gamers about these games all the time. You mayb not be the same type of fanboy but believe me, you are a fanboy in some respencts.”  
Trey kind of shrinks back at that, and says “Please never call be a ‘fanboy’ again.”  
Ben however has not been paying attennio to this side conversation. In his mind all he can see is the three of them joinng the story, meeting up with the characters, effecting their lives. All he can see is what will happen when he points out to Jane how much she does not want to be with John - she will listen to him, of course, because he is persuasive and, more importantly, she is right. He can see him sitting down with John for a heart to heart, forcing him to confront the feelings inside of him that he has for the other girl in their group, Roxy.  
He imagines, as Mina pokes a jab at Trey, that Roxy will finally be able to satiate that pining that has been in her heart for years, steady and confident and quiet Roxy, who made her thoughts know back in season 2 and accepted when John was too stupid to reciprocate.  
Minutses earlier, breaking up a fictional couple hd seemed to Ben to be the worst possible thing they could do. Now toe romance and magic of the idea has captured him. He is in a sort of daze about it and Trey and Mina have a sort of unspoken pact not to mention this because he is weirding them out. Trey has never seen him like this and Mina didn’t know this is what he did RIL when having feels.  
“Why are we standing around here wating time?” Ben asks, a touch of anger in hus voice now “Come on, Mina, let’s get at it”  
She huffs and relents and puts the DVD case in the scanner, which reacts to it the same way it did before with Trey’s video game case.  
“Before we how up there,” Try says as the mini globe and numbers and dials on the control panel shift round, “one of you is going to have to fill me in on this weird story we’re visiting.”  
“It-” Mina starts but is quickly cut off.  
“Its a modern day story,” Ben says, “Set up to look like a realistic fiction piece about a guy who sets up a detective agency for the hell of it, but it is revealed in the pilot to be more of an urban fantasy. This guy’s group of friends includes a few people with special powers, and they use these powers to help him catch bad guys and so forth. The draw that first season is the fact that, even when they know what is really going on or whodunit, they still have to get a real confession or find solid proof for the police.”  
“OK-” Trey starts to say, but is also cut off.  
“Then,” Ben continues, “It is revealed at the end of the first season that most of the people in this group of friends who have powers were secretly given these powers by another organization who have been monitoring them their whole lives. They only realize this because thaat group comes onto the detective agencies radar. There are some shady things going down and only our faithful protagonist can figure it out to help save his friens, despite the fact that he himself is a normal personal with no powers whatsoever.”  
“Thank you-” Trey tries to cut in, but is once again interrupted.  
“Things reallly take a turn for the worse at the beginning o season three, though,” ben says, his voice growing in pitch as he goes on and his excitement becaomeing increasingly evident. Mina has turned just to stare at him now, even though the consol has finished configurating. “The protagonist is kidnapped by this organisation and learns that all they’ve really been trying to do this whole time is stop a deadly event they believe is doomed to hppen - a sort of apolcalypse, if you will - and the people with powers are supposed to be able to combine their forces for the greater good, like a wannabe superhero thing. But is the organization lying or are they tellling the truth? and in the meantime there are all these cases to solce and sometimes-”  
“That’s enough!” Tey finally shouts. “Wow, thank you Ben, That was really way more than I needed to know.”  
Ben kind of gets his breath back for a moment. Tehn more quietly, he says, “It was canceed after season five. They tacked on some shoddy ending about it all having been a lie even thouh it was obvious they intended to go somehwre else with the story. I was really upset - hey could have gone on tfor three more years o flesh outt the story. I was a goood show.”  
“I have never heard you use thee word ‘shoddy’ before.”  
Mina just grins at them. “It relly was a great show,” she says, and the directors released some concept outlines to fill in what should have happened for the last three years.”  
“So that’s where we’re going,” Trey says, looking down at the DVD case still sitting on the scanner.  
“yup. To break up two of the characters who end up going out by the end and make sure they hook up with other peole. And’t its great becaus it’s a modern fantasy, so we dont have to change our wardrobe or anything like that.”  
“Well whatever,” Trey says, sitting down on the other provided chair at the console, “Sounds like a plan to me.  
Mina looks at ben and raises an eyeborw. “Well, what are you sitting down for? You coming or not?”  
“Oh,” Trey stands up, “Are we actually going out now? Finally? I thought we were just going to sit around like little kids yapping away all day.”  
“The word ‘day’ really has no meaning in tmetafictive space.”  
“Oh shut up.”  
They head into the other rom, watch as it dissolves around them and find themseles in the beachsidetown of nowheresville, place that doesn’t really exis exept now it does. Ben’s eyes go wide with excitement, immidately catching sight of the building their the detective agecy is located. He turns around to get a good look a everthing around them, and stops cold when he catches himself staring into his face,  
“Ah um,” says Ben.  
“Oh,” Other Ben agrees.  
Other Mina looks the most shocked and, surprisingly, Other Trey seems kind of nonchalant about the whol deal. Mina and Trey turn around to see what is going on and have reverse reations; Mina is a bit plesently surprised and Trey almost falls over his own feet.  
“Hello!” Mina says lesantly, holding back an offered hadshake.  
“Ah,” Oter Mina says, and Ben and Other Ben and everyone else involved can see her warming up to the idea of running into herself, almost literally.  
“Temporal loop,” Mina says.  
“Looks like it,” Other Mina agrees.  
“Weren’t we doing something?” Other Trey whines. Trey says nohing.  
“I guess you’re me,” ther Ben says, ignoring Other trey. Ben chuckles nervously.  
“Looks like it.”  
“I don’t know if we’re supposed to give any spoilers,” Other Mina says hesitantly.  
“Rpobably not,” Mina agrees. Well just go about what we’re doing until we’re you and you go about whatever you’re doing.”  
“Sounds like a plan,” Other Trey sas sarcastically. Tey is still saying nothing “Come on, lets’ go.”  
The Other groups shuffles onward, towards the main city center, ther Mina dna Other Ben both turning back at one point to wave.  
“What. The Heck.” Tre says, watching them leave.  
“Figured that would happen,” Mina sghs. we’re traveling, temporally, across our own movements, we’re boudnt o run into ourselves at some point or anytoher.”  
“That doesn’t just hapen,” Trey says, then looks at ben more forecefully. “This kidn of thing does not just happen.”  
“Other you seems to be OK wit it,” Ben says, nodding in their direction.  
“Other me is Crazy!”  
“Come on, MIna says, tugging on both of their jacket shoulders, “Let’s go!’ she half drags them i the irection of the office builing Ben can feel nervousness rising inside of him.  
“What are we going to say>” he asks? “Waht are we going to say?”  
“What are you nerous?” Mina jokes.  
“WE JUST RAN INTO OURSELVES,” Trey shouts.  
“Of course I’m nervous, these are my favorite characters from my favorite tv show, what do we say?”  
“This is an urban fantasy, remember? We pretend we’re oracles. Or we have powers too, that give us knowledge. They’l think we’re cool and let us in.  
“THESE KIDSN OF THINGS DONT HAPPEN.”  
“Some of us have powers. You and I, or maybe just you.”  
“Youre pproposing we split up a famous fictional couple?” Ben ased, unbelieving.  
“Can’t realy split them up if they’ve never been together. I’m proposing we keep a famous fictional couple from getting together.”  
“Awesome,” Trey says, cutting off Ben’s reply of ‘but tha’s the most evil thing we could possibly do’ or something like that. He hadn’t really fully formed the thought yet, but it does seem like possibly one of the meanest things he could think of to do.  
“But they’re a famous fictional couple for a reason,” ben says, “They’re meant to be together, they’er perfect for each other. They belong together and we’re just going to ruin that?”  
“Come off it,” trey says, punching his friend softly in the shoulder, “I didn’t know you were into sappy things like that.”  
“You don’t even know who we’re breaking up,” Mina says. She pulls up a backpack she has sitting on the floor by her chair - obviously she had the same idea Ben had. the same idea Trey missed out on. Ben noticed earlier that his backpack was looking just as empyt as it usually does, or even moreso with ack of notebooks.  
From her bag, Mina pulls out a DVD. It’s in a boz set, for discs in one, from the first season of a television show that isn’t Emerald Springs ubt might just have been Ben’s favorite before he found Emerald Springs. The show is not a romantic comedy, not in its core nature, but it is comedic, and like most stories intended to appeal to a mass of people, there is a major romantic subplot involving several of the main characters. In fact, the only hcaracters who don’t have romantic woes and successes throughout the show’s time are the two married ones.  
Ben’s eyes light up when he sees it, though, because he knows exactly what it means. “My OTP,” he practically whispers reverantly. Mina’s replying grin confrims his suspicion.  
“Excuse me, what?” Trey looks between the two, seeing that something is going on but not sure what it is.  
“We’re going to-?” Ben starts, still not sure he can believe it. Mina is just nodding encouragingly.  
“We’re going to break up Jane and John, Ben. We’re going to do it, you and I and Trey just because he’s here, and we’re going to get John and Rooxy together.”  
“Can one of you tell me what’s going on?” Trey tries to cut in again. “Who are we breaking up, and why? And what’s OTP?”  
“One true pairing,” Mina responds, setting the DVD set down on the console table. “It stands for one true pairing. When there are two characters who you want to egt together, they are a pairing. A pair of characters who should be hooking up, and when they are the pairing you are most involved with in the entire show, or book or whatever, they are your One TRUE Pairing. The ship that will never sink no matter how many fictional canon’s shoot at it ebcause your headcanon is supreme protector.”  
“I did not unnderstand that last part at all.” Trey says, shaking his head. “And I only think I understand what you’re talking about? I never really paid attention to Ben’s fandom things.”  
“And ben never really paid attention to your fandom things so I guess it all evens out/”  
“No,” Trey says with a laugh, “I don’t really do fandom things. That’s not my style.”  
Mina gives him a look. “You have a series of video games you will never stop talking about. Ben tells me you hccat with online gamers about these games all the time. You mayb not be the same type of fanboy but believe me, you are a fanboy in some respencts.”  
Trey kind of shrinks back at that, and says “Please never call be a ‘fanboy’ again.”  
Ben however has not been paying attennio to this side conversation. In his mind all he can see is the three of them joinng the story, meeting up with the characters, effecting their lives. All he can see is what will happen when he points out to Jane how much she does not want to be with John - she will listen to him, of course, because he is persuasive and, more importantly, she is right. He can see him sitting down with John for a heart to heart, forcing him to confront the feelings inside of him that he has for the other girl in their group, Roxy.  
He imagines, as Mina pokes a jab at Trey, that Roxy will finally be able to satiate that pining that has been in her heart for years, steady and confident and quiet Roxy, who made her thoughts know back in season 2 and accepted when John was too stupid to reciprocate.  
Minutses earlier, breaking up a fictional couple hd seemed to Ben to be the worst possible thing they could do. Now toe romance and magic of the idea has captured him. He is in a sort of daze about it and Trey and Mina have a sort of unspoken pact not to mention this because he is weirding them out. Trey has never seen him like this and Mina didn’t know this is what he did RIL when having feels.  
“Why are we standing around here wating time?” Ben asks, a touch of anger in hus voice now “Come on, Mina, let’s get at it”  
She huffs and relents and puts the DVD case in the scanner, which reacts to it the same way it did before with Trey’s video game case.  
“Before we how up there,” Try says as the mini globe and numbers and dials on the control panel shift round, “one of you is going to have to fill me in on this weird story we’re visiting.”  
“It-” Mina starts but is quickly cut off.  
“Its a modern day story,” Ben says, “Set up to look like a realistic fiction piece about a guy who sets up a detective agency for the hell of it, but it is revealed in the pilot to be more of an urban fantasy. This guy’s group of friends includes a few people with special powers, and they use these powers to help him catch bad guys and so forth. The draw that first season is the fact that, even when they know what is really going on or whodunit, they still have to get a real confession or find solid proof for the police.”  
“OK-” Trey starts to say, but is also cut off.  
“Then,” Ben continues, “It is revealed at the end of the first season that most of the people in this group of friends who have powers were secretly given these powers by another organization who have been monitoring them their whole lives. They only realize this because thaat group comes onto the detective agencies radar. There are some shady things going down and only our faithful protagonist can figure it out to help save his friens, despite the fact that he himself is a normal personal with no powers whatsoever.”  
“Thank you-” Trey tries to cut in, but is once again interrupted.  
“Things reallly take a turn for the worse at the beginning o season three, though,” ben says, his voice growing in pitch as he goes on and his excitement becaomeing increasingly evident. Mina has turned just to stare at him now, even though the consol has finished configurating. “The protagonist is kidnapped by this organisation and learns that all they’ve really been trying to do this whole time is stop a deadly event they believe is doomed to hppen - a sort of apolcalypse, if you will - and the people with powers are supposed to be able to combine their forces for the greater good, like a wannabe superhero thing. But is the organization lying or are they tellling the truth? and in the meantime there are all these cases to solce and sometimes-”  
“That’s enough!” Tey finally shouts. “Wow, thank you Ben, That was really way more than I needed to know.”  
Ben kind of gets his breath back for a moment. Tehn more quietly, he says, “It was canceed after season five. They tacked on some shoddy ending about it all having been a lie even thouh it was obvious they intended to go somehwre else with the story. I was really upset - hey could have gone on tfor three more years o flesh outt the story. I was a goood show.”  
“I have never heard you use thee word ‘shoddy’ before.”  
Mina just grins at them. “It relly was a great show,” she says, and the directors released some concept outlines to fill in what should have happened for the last three years.”  
“So that’s where we’re going,” Trey says, looking down at the DVD case still sitting on the scanner.  
“yup. To break up two of the characters who end up going out by the end and make sure they hook up with other peole. And’t its great becaus it’s a modern fantasy, so we dont have to change our wardrobe or anything like that.”  
“Well whatever,” Trey says, sitting down on the other provided chair at the console, “Sounds like a plan to me.  
Mina looks at ben and raises an eyeborw. “Well, what are you sitting down for? You coming or not?”  
“Oh,” Trey stands up, “Are we actually going out now? Finally? I thought we were just going to sit around like little kids yapping away all day.”  
“The word ‘day’ really has no meaning in tmetafictive space.”  
“Oh shut up.”  
They head into the other rom, watch as it dissolves around them and find themseles in the beachsidetown of nowheresville, place that doesn’t really exis exept now it does. Ben’s eyes go wide with excitement, immidately catching sight of the building their the detective agecy is located. He turns around to get a good look a everthing around them, and stops cold when he catches himself staring into his face,  
“Ah um,” says Ben.  
“Oh,” Other Ben agrees.  
Other Mina looks the most shocked and, surprisingly, Other Trey seems kind of nonchalant about the whol deal. Mina and Trey turn around to see what is going on and have reverse reations; Mina is a bit plesently surprised and Trey almost falls over his own feet.  
“Hello!” Mina says lesantly, holding back an offered hadshake.  
“Ah,” Oter Mina says, and Ben and Other Ben and everyone else involved can see her warming up to the idea of running into herself, almost literally.  
“Temporal loop,” Mina says.  
“Looks like it,” Other Mina agrees.  
“Weren’t we doing something?” Other Trey whines. Trey says nohing.  
“I guess you’re me,” ther Ben says, ignoring Other trey. Ben chuckles nervously.  
“Looks like it.”  
“I don’t know if we’re supposed to give any spoilers,” Other Mina says hesitantly.  
“Rpobably not,” Mina agrees. Well just go about what we’re doing until we’re you and you go about whatever you’re doing.”  
“Sounds like a plan,” Other Trey sas sarcastically. Tey is still saying nothing “Come on, lets’ go.”  
The Other groups shuffles onward, towards the main city center, ther Mina dna Other Ben both turning back at one point to wave.  
“What. The Heck.” Tre says, watching them leave.  
“Figured that would happen,” Mina sghs. we’re traveling, temporally, across our own movements, we’re boudnt o run into ourselves at some point or anytoher.”  
“That doesn’t just hapen,” Trey says, then looks at ben more forecefully. “This kidn of thing does not just happen.”  
“Other you seems to be OK wit it,” Ben says, nodding in their direction.  
“Other me is Crazy!”  
“Come on, MIna says, tugging on both of their jacket shoulders, “Let’s go!’ she half drags them i the irection of the office builing Ben can feel nervousness rising inside of him.  
“What are we going to say>” he asks? “Waht are we going to say?”  
“What are you nerous?” Mina jokes.  
“WE JUST RAN INTO OURSELVES,” Trey shouts.  
“Of course I’m nervous, these are my favorite characters from my favorite tv show, what do we say?”  
“This is an urban fantasy, remember? We pretend we’re oracles. Or we have powers too, that give us knowledge. They’l think we’re cool and let us in.  
“THESE KIDSN OF THINGS DONT HAPPEN.”  
“Some of us have powers. You and I, or maybe just you.”  
“You,” ben says, “I’d be way too nervous..”  
“No, both of us. You can see the future, and I’ll make sense of what you see. I’ll do most of the talking.”  
“Then we’re like a tag team of powers, that seems weird.”  
“You know what seems weird?” Trey says, trying to get their attention, “This whole situation. This whole this is weird.”  
“You’re weird,” Mina spits at him. “OK Ben, we tell ‘em we’re cousins or something raised together because your arents died, we’re almost twins.”  
en just kind of looks at her and Trey pipes up, “Um, I don’t think you guys could pass for twins, or cousins, or anything but related very, very distantly.”  
Mina acts like this thought has just occured to her. In actuality, the thought occured to her halfway through her sentence but she decided just to keep going for dramatic effect. The amount of things Mina will do for dramatic effect should not surprise anyne.  
“Adopted, then” she saysm “We’ll say you were adopted.”  
“I think I can deal with that,” ben agrees. She gives him a quizzical look, pretending she doesn’t know what it is he thinks he is having to deal with. “hat about this guy?” he aasks, jerking a thumb at Trey.  
“I’m you’re friend,” Trey says.  
“No, i mean-”  
“I know what you mean. Just say I’m your friend, I figured out what was going on, yada yada. I mean, I’d loe t be able to read minds or shoot fireballs bu I’m assuming we haven’t found a way to actually give ourself super powers, right?”  
“Duh.”  
“Then yeah, I’ll be the normal one.”  
Mina breathes deeply to calm herself as the get to the door of the building. They still have an elevator ride before they meet any importat characters but, though she prides herself on being put together and in charge, she is actually pretty nervous about all this. Meeting characters in stories you’ve never read is one thing; that’s like beeing an actor whose movies youve never seen. Meeting characters you feel you know deeply and admire... well, thats something else.  
The elevator, however, is broken down. “I don’t remember this happening,” ben says.  
“Yeah,” Mina agrees, “i don’t think this ever happened specifically either. I don’t really know what point of the story we’re even in,” she admits as well, “I’m assuming ot’s towards the beinning, but Trey’s games, but...”  
“We’re taking the stairs the, right?” Trey asks. “No point standing around yammering about wanting to figure things out, might as well go and do it.”  
“You’ve calmed down considerably,” Mina says, “we’rent you freaking out about something or other earlier? I remmeber there being some freaking out.”  
“Don’t get me wrong:  
“Uhh,” Ben thinks about it, “five years. Five years froom now, in the future.”  
“Willl they even stil be here?” Trey asks.  
“I can lock onto someone. The location was stick on them while we rotate the time axis. for examle..” Mina searches around for a little while until she finds ROxy, sitting in the office in the building. Mina plays with another dial and then suddenly Roxy’s cordinates show up on another montieor. She rolls a year into the future, two, too fast to see what Roxy is doing in that time, and finally slows down after five years.  
In that time, just by what they can see in the grainy monitor above them, there have been quite a few changes, while simultaniously not a lot has changed The woman looks a bit older, getting into her id thirties, her hairstyle different. She is sitting in her apartment innstead of in the office, and it doesn’t look like Ben and Mina remember.  
However, they can tell instantly that it is her apartment She is alone, the room decorated simlarly to the way it is in the show, and she sits back, reading abook, in the middle of the day, with seemingly nothing better to do. Ben and Mina share a look, part worried that maybe something bad has happened in her life, maybe people have died and she has been left alone and there is nothing to accomplish - and part embarressed for even thinking that, since sitting alone in an apartment, reading a book, sounds like an ideal afternoon to them both.  
“No time like the present,” Ben says, hesitantly and ironically. Mina reluctantly smiles at his use of irony. Trey doesn’t get it. “Out in the hallway, but make sure we’re clear first.”  
Mina adjusts the space meter and checks the hallway. The settles on a five minute span of time where no one is walking out, and sets the machine to put them down right in the middle of it.  
“alright,” she says, a bit worried still, leading the way to the transporter, “Let’s go this.”  
The hallway is red tined, with a redish floor and redish walls, the only break being the light brown wood paneling and fake plants. It seems like a pretty nice hallway in general in Ben’s opinion, not that he’s ever liked the idea of living in a room off a hallway with a bunch of other strangers.  
Mina knocks on the door belonging to Roxy’s apartment and they wait, shuffling for a minute until she comes to the door. When she opens it, the chain is latched, and she looks down at the kids in front of her, closes the door just as ben is abut to speak, and unlatches it to opn it wider.  
“Can I help you?” she asks, obviously confused to see three random kids standing before her.  
“Hi, We’re...” ben starts to sy, but he doesn’t know how to continue. He tries again. “Are you Roxy?”  
Roxy nods.  
“Um,” Ben tries again, “We’re... we were looking for you? My name is Ben - this is Mina, and Trey. I, uh-”  
“We have reason to believe you’re not normal,” Mina says, cutting him off and moving things along. Roxy blinks. “I know this is awkward but my friend Ben can see the past - not his own past, but that of other peole like us, who can... do things. Except lately it’s been wild, he’s been seeing different people.”  
Ben nods along the whole time.  
“See,” mina continues, “It used to be just him, and me, and some people we knew, and then people int he town, and now it’s been people all over the country.”  
“I... see.” Roxy says. She looks back and forth between them, trying to tell if they’re lying, then looks at Trey, who puts his hands up defensively.  
“No,” he says, “I’m the oraml one of the group.”  
“Come in,” Roxy finally says, moving out of the doorway to let the kids into her apartment. “I think I know exactly what you’re talking about.”  
They shuffle in, ben trying to take in everything he sees even though he already got a glance through the metaficrive monitor earlier. Roxy moves into the kitchen area, pulling a chair out from the bar to make more seating, and gestures to the cough for the kids to sit down. ben somehow ends up in the middle.  
“You’re talking about powers?: Roxy says more than asks.  
“Yes,” Mina nods.  
“And you can see... other people who have powers?” She asks, looking at Ben. Ben nods.  
“In a way, yeah. I see... part of their stories.”  
“And what about you?” Roxy asks, looking at Mina.  
“I see the future,” Mina says, quickly pullng something out of her head. “it’s very fuzzy though, not really reliable, I almost never know what it means.”  
Roxy nods knowingly. “I have a few friends,” she starts to say, somewhat still in thought. Mina and Ben instantly jump on the fact that she uses the present tense, not the past, and ben cracks a smile, relieved. “there are a few of us,” Roxy continues, “That can, I guess, do things, as you put it.”  
Mina and Ben are both silent, waiting for her to say more, but it’s Trey who has the thought enough to ask “what about you? What are your powers?” Trey is the only one of the group who doesn’t already know, and no one except Roxy herself realizes that she is still hesitenat, still watching their actions, trying to guage what they might already know and if they’re really who they sya they are.  
She smiles a bit and the book she had been reading, which was sitting on the coffee table, bookmark in place, raises a foot into the air, starts to slip open through the pages before closing again, then slowly glides through the air into Roxy’s waiting hand. She sets it down on the kitchen counter behind her. Trey is dumbstruck, staring in awe. Ben and Mina smile excitedly to each other.  
“That’s so cool!” Trey finally says. ben wants to agree - hi first time actualy seeing something supernatural with his own eyes! - but Roxy ssort of just looks away sadly. Not all is well, he can tell.  
“When I saw you before,” Ben says, “you were with some friends. You, uh, you had a detective agency? And there were a couple of you with powers.”  
“You saw quite a bit then, I gaher/”  
“I had to have seen enough to be able to track you here,” Ben says. “I know your name is Roxy because I remember hearing somone else call you that, I know you have a few friends with powers - I remember someone named... John?”  
He looks closely to see if there will be a reaction, and Roxy smiles, then nodds. “Yeah,” she says, then lists off a few of ther other friends as well. “We did detective work back in the ay,” she said, “ot that there’s really much to be detecting out here in this city, but we got enough work to get by. Lots of... interesting things happened. You really missed out - if you had showed up a couple years ago...”  
She makes a face, like ‘that would have been interesting’, and Mina thinks about the fact that they did show up a few years ao, and neer returned. It’s that trouble with the organiation, though, Ben is thinking.  
“Is that all over?” he asks.  
Roxy raises an eyebrow. “Yeah,” she says, “How much of that did you see’?”  
Ben shrugs. “a bit. there was some trouble, some people you weren’t really sure if they were trustworthy or not...?”  
“That’s exactly right. Yeah, it’s all over now.”  
“And... did they end up to be? How did that all turn out?”  
Roxy shakes her head. You seem really interested in all this” she says, “really interested.”  
“I’m sorry,” Trey speaks up, nuging his friend in the shoulder, “Ben’s really obsessed with finding out the full story behind things. You tell him an interesting story and he just has to hear the entire thing. That’s part of the reason we came out all ths way to find you - Ben said he didn’t know what else had gone on and he wanted to see if we could find out.”  
“Oh,” Roxy says, feigning hurt, “and here I thought the kids were just interested in finding me to see if they could make friends.” Mina’s first reaction is to bristle a bit but sh cant stay to mad at one of her favorite fictional characters.  
“SOrry,” Ben says with a weak smile, “but... you don’t mind, do you?”  
“Telling you my life story? it’s a bit of a weird request. Never been asked that before, except by a therapist I had to lie to anyways.”  
“I have no life story,” Trey cuts in again. ben wants to hug him for stepping in so much in order to fulfill one of Ben’s dreams. “High school kid, going to school. I have two parents and a little sister and a dog we named Spot despite the fact that he had a plain golden coat. When I get to college I planned on getting a degree in liberal arts because I have no idea what I really want to do with my life.”  
Now it’s Roxy’s turn to nod along. When he finishes, she says “I was sort of the same, until I realized I had these powers. Accidentally told John and we realized there were a number of our friends who had these powers too. I just sort of helped out, went along, didn’t realize until recently what I wanted to do for myself. It’s never to late, I guess, not to sound lik a self help book.”  
trey just nods, half agreeing and half wishing she would stop sounding like a self help book and just tell ben her stupid story so they can get on with the larger story at hand. i’m right there with you Trey. Right there with you.  
“I went back to school last year,” She says, looking back at Ben. “Did you see that?”  
“I didn’t,” he shakes his head.  
“I went back, and started taking classes in digital esign. My family thinks Im crazy for wanting to get into art this late in my life but it’s taken me this long to realize that’s what I had a passion for, if you can call it that, so I figured i should get started as fast as possible. In the meantime John and I still work cases together.”  
A surge of hope begins to spring in ben’s heart, but he is afraid of nursing it, or even drwing attention to it. Mina, though she is not a mindreader, can tell eactly what he’s thinking at this moment.  
“You, uh,” he begins, “you still work together? With everyone else?”  
“Not so much,” Rozy sighs, “The others have kind of moved on. Jane met a guy in the city somewhere and moved in with him-” and she lists off a few of their other friends, saying where they’ve moved to, what they’re working on now. Ben’s grin can’t even be contained, and he hopes that the fictional woman sitting in front of them wont be too put off with it.  
Ten minutes later, after fleshing out the story, Ben says goodbye to her and stands up to go with Mina and trey. She gives them good luck on theoir journey and he thanks her, not even sure what journey exactly she is talking about.  
In the halways in front of the apartment, out of sight of the peekhole just in case, Ben and Mina hug. Actually hug, and giant squueeze with some barely contained silent screaming. Trey groans audibly.  
“You’re kidding me right?”  
“They made it!” Ben says, tries not to shout, in the empty hallway with all the doros into other peoples lives.  
“YES!” Mina does shout, and giggles, and Ben shushes her while laughing himself. Trey awkwardly ries to push them towards the elevator so they wont cause any more of a scene.  
“We didn’t even have to do anything!” Ben says.  
“NO! It all worked out just like it should have!”  
“Well no, it should have worked out years ago-”  
“It all worked out almost exactly as it should have!”  
“Yes!”  
“How do you guys even know?” trey asks, managing t get them shoved in the elevator. He hits the buttons for the ground floor. “She never said they were datng.”  
“She smiled when she said John’s name,” Mina says, deadpan, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world and how did Trey not see that.  
“The specifically said Jane had moved away,” Ben adds, “Had hitched with someone else. John is free, and working exclusively with Roxy? They are practically living together-” then he stares straight across at Mina and says, lodly, “If they’re not already!”  
Her eyes go wide with excitement, and Trey rolls his. “You’re right!” she says, “That might be why the paartment looked a bit different than what we expected! It was neater - because John is living there, making sure she keeps it tidy!”: They high five and Trey burie his face in one palm.  
“OK,” trey says, “we need to leae.”  
“We are leaving.”  
“hios universe. We need to leave this universe and go back home or somehing. Mina, where’s that weird neckalve of yours”  
She pulls it out but then keeps it out of reach, covering the button with her palm. “What do you mean we need to leave now?”  
“We did a thing, we made your couple become canon, congratulations, now lets get out of here.” The elevator dings open and a small family stands there, wanting to come inside. the two ggroups quietly switch places and the kids walk through the lobby, out the door, thourouhgly confusing the front desk lerk.  
“You want to go home already?” Ben asks.  
“I don’t know, but I want to do something, and sitting around here, we’re not doing anything.”  
Mina sighs but relents, giving a half-ironic wave goodbye to the world before pressing the button, materializing them into the trransport room o the ship.  
“Why is it called a MacGuffin?” ben asks when they’re standing in the room, silent. Trey looks at him an Ben holds up the metal bracelet he’s been wearing this whole time. “What does that even mean? Is it the name of the guy you stole this from?”  
“No,” Mina says, “He was a Clark actually. MacGuffin is... a thing.”  
“A thing?”  
“An important thing. A relevant thing. A thing that is important.”  
“An important thing?”  
“es. An important thing that lets things important things happen, lie us being able to meet up. Wouldn’t have happened without the MacGuffin.”  
Ben looks down at the bracelet. “So basically what you’re saying... is that is didn’t have to be a bracelet.”  
“...no”  
“It could have been something cool like... a sword.”  
“That would have been awkward to carry around downtown,” Trey says.  
“Or a tattoo or something awesome like that maybe?”  
“Not as easy as... a thing on your writst?” Mina doesn’t wait for a response and instead jsut walks out of the room.  
Within en minutes again they’re in a differnt universe, this one their own. They touch down on the sidewalk, the same sidewalk they left all that time ago, later that same day. Ben again begins to wonder how much local time has passed for him.  
“Wait right here,” Trey says, and dashes off towards his hopuse, caling back “I’ll only be gone a minute!”  
Ben looks at his shoes. “will Mom notice I was gone?” he asks no one in particular, already knowing the answer Mina will give.  
“No” is the answer Mina gives, “she’ll think you were in school all day. The teachers will hae noticed you were gone. Your other friends in class.”  
Ben is silent for a moment then says “I don’t really have friends in class. I have Trey, who has a few friends we sometimes hang out with. I’m not very cool.”  
“I beg to differ. You are very cool/”  
“On the internt. That doesn’t count. That’s not...” He doesn’t know what to sya.  
“Not real? Is that what you’re going to say?”  
“I guess.”  
“What,: Mina asks, mock joking, “Are you a robot? Is everything you write on the internet created by some machine with a specifc response output?”  
“No.”  
“Are you lying when you write on the internet?”  
“No,” Ben says again, a bit more defensive this time. He does exactly pride himsself on his honesty but he is happy about the fact that he is honest, that he can be honest when conversing online.  
“Then how is that not real?” Mina asks. She playfully bumps his houlder. “How are we less of friends than you and Trey, who doesn’t seem to share many of your interests?”  
“Because,” Ben starts to say, thinking about the idea, “because we never met, in real life. We never...”  
“What about people who do meet in real life,” Mina cuts him of, “Best friends in school maybe, and then go off to college, but keep in touch. Write leters an follow eachother online and only rarely get to see each other? How is that different? Because they met that first time?”  
“I don’t know,” Ben admits. “When you put it like that... but that’s not realy how it’s been done.”  
“It isn’t,” Mina agrees, “for the entirety of human history, being friends online was never considered the same as being friends win real life. BUt for the entirey of human history, talking with someone on the phoone had never been considered the same thing as having a small conversation in passing in real life. Until it was. New things are always considered less valid, until they’re not.”  
Ben said nothing. Partly because he was thinking about what she said, and partly because even Mina herself had trailed off when they saw Trey walking about down the street, dog in tow.  
“Wht,” she said doumbly. Trey just grinned.  
“You’re kidding,” Ben says, watching the dog was limply just behind Trey. “I thought you weren’t going to bring the dog along.”  
“I don’t know,” Trey says, “I guess I just sort of felt like things would be better if we had Spot. Like we were missing out on some chances or somethin.”  
“What are you even talking about,” Mina says, “Missing out on chaces? You were complaining this morning about how you didn’t want your dog along and now you take us out of our way to go pick him up?”  
“Just go with it,” Trey says “Narrative flow or whatever. Isn’t this just what you want? To shake up the story a bit?”  
“Within reason,” Mina says, deadpan, trying to get this across to Trey, “Shake up the story within reason. Do something smart, not acting stupid.”  
“Whatever,” Trey says, “Lets just tget this show back on the road. I’m starving.”  
Ben finally realizes he’s starving too. “Ww,” he says, hand on his stomach, “We haven’t eaten anything all day, have we? Or gone to the bathroom or done anything normal.”  
Nina shruggs. “I wasn’t thinking about that,” she says, “I figured it was just narrative rules. Once your in the story, insignifacant things like that disappear.”  
“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works,” says Trey.  
“Yeah,” Ben agrees, “It’s not that the characters - or we - don’t do those sort of things anymore, it’s just that they’re not mentioned by the narrative.”  
“OK whatever,” Mina sighs. You guys want to pee or something?”  
They both look down conspicuously at thmselves. “I’m good,” Ben says, and trey quickly agrees.  
“Then let’s go eat. Where?”  
Trey starts to speak but Ben quickly cuts him off, saying “The Chinese diner!” in an excited manner.  
“What?” Is now Trey’s turn to say.  
“You mean from the TV show we just left?” Mina confirms. Ben nods excitedly. Spot esigns himself to sitting again because there’s more talk and nothing to interest him.  
“You mean - but come on!” Trey complains, “We just spent what is probably the equivalent to a full day there!”  
“judging by your bladders,” Mina says, “Probably less. Probably half a day - in fact, if we had never left, it miht only be around noon now.”  
“Shut up. We spent the whle day in some weird univere of yours and now you want to go back for lunch break?”  
“You don’t understand,” Ben says, “This diner - it’s Chinese food, which already isn’t supposed to be served at a diner, right? But it’s the best food ever, or so they say in the show, you can walk in whenever and sit down and order and they give you free refills and the food, you just don’t want to stop eating.”  
“Hmm,” Trey says, not very impressed. He likes Chinese food well enough but it isn’t his favrite type of food in the world.  
“We have to try it,” Ben insists, “I wont be satisfied until we do. What’s the point in having the ability to visit our favorite stories if we can’t try out firsthand the things we’ve heard so much about.”  
“I haven’t heard anything about this food until today,’ Trey points out. “Besides, they’ve got a great inter-space cafe in my video game world.  
Benr ealizes now that they nevr got to fully explore the one place Trey himself had mentioend wanting to go. He tries nott o, but a part of him becomes guiltridden. “OK,” Ben says, “How about we go get food firs - wer’e all hungry - and explor your vieo game? We’ve got more experience now, we know what we’re doing, we shouldn’t get into any troube.”  
“You don’t have-” Trey tries to backpeddal, but Mina cuts him off, holding up a hand and then pressing the botton on her neckalce to take them back to the ship.  
Spot spends the few seconds of materialization not overly concerned with what’s going on. It’s sort of his base emotion and it doesn’t change for such a measely thing like metafictive space travle.  
The boys folow Mina into the control room one again, this time Trey stops to let Spot off his leash. The dog, recogniing the room, meanders over to a corner and plops down, returning to the na that had been so rudely interrupted just a while ago.  
“Alright, back to the univers,” Mina says, adjusting the dial to the notch she already has memorized. They’re back on the ground within five minnutes, the air lightly breezy. “Which way do we go?” Mina asks.  
“Over hee,” Ben ppoints, and leads th way towards the cetner of the city where he remembers, from countless hours of intense study, wheere the chinese diner will be. They chat a bit as they walk but in a moment Trey gets a sick feeling in his tomach.  
“Oh no,” he says, putting one hand to his tumy.  
Mina sees it and asks “Waht’s wrong?”  
“Can’tn you-” he starts but then something cuts him off. Ben and Mina both looks at him oddly and then follow his eyes and catch themselves looking at themselves.  
“Oh,” Mina says, and then a look of excitement begins to grow on her face. It’s only a few moments before Other Ben turns around and Ben is staaring into his own eyes. There’s a moment of awkwardness, but then the same scenes plays out as did before  
Ben is awkward about seeing Ben. Trey just wants to get out of there because he is starving while Other Trey is freaking out and can’t deal. Mina i also freaking out, trying to hangel the situation, while Other Mina is pretty elated about the whole affair. After a few minuts the two groups go their separate ways.  
“Ugh,” Trey says, “Why didn’t we know that was coming?”  
“We weren’t really paying attention I guess,” Mina answers even though the uestion was obviously rhetorical.  
“Let’s just eat,” he sighs, and they continue on their way. It takes about ten or fiteen minutes but Ben finally locates the chinese diner, as usualy a bit different from how it had been portrayed on the show. They go in, sit down, order food, wit a few minutes with a light conversation no one’s really committed to, and are finally brought their plates. Ben has that light in his eye again and Trey picks up a fork. Mina gives him a death stare.  
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”  
“What?”  
“You can’t use a fork on Chinese food. That’s sarilige.”  
“Religion has nothing to do with it. Chopsticks are jsut friggin impossible to use. Who cares.”  
Ben ignores them both. He is dipping chicken in sauce and it is warm, but not burning his mouth, and it tastes good.  
“I care. You can’t eat chinese food with a fork. You don’t eat a hamburger with a knife, right?”  
“What?”  
“And you don’t eat noodles with a spoon, right?”  
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, I just want to eat.”  
“The food was designed for certain utensils, you have to use the right utensils when you eat it!”  
“Mina,” Ben cuts in finally, having thouroughly shewed one bite-size piece of chicken. “Let him do whatever - the food. is. delivious.”  
Mina delicately uses her chopsticks to taste what’ss on her plate, while throwing Trey a glare, and then nods with Ben. “Oh my gosh it is.”  
Trey starts with his rice though, using the fork almost obnoxiously and saying “look, how the heck do yu eat this stuff with a chopsticks anyways? Pick up one grain at a time? Heck no.”  
Mina demonstrates with her chopsticsk and earns a glare ffrom him. “You just don’t know how to use them,” she says, “Which is completely and totally your fault.”  
“Is it really all that important?” ben asks. Can’t you eat whatever you want however you want?”  
“No, because if you eat it he wrong way you’re not showing proper respect to the food itself. The food is jusging you” Trey stiffles a laugh.  
“Wow,” he says, “You’re very opinionated.”  
“There are somethings I care abouut,” Mina sniffs, “Some things I have a stance on, and I stick to that stance.”  
“OK Whatever. This is pretty good though.”  
Ben sighs as if this is the happiest he’s been. It isn’t and he knows that but it’s fun to pretend, when everthing in the word seems to have suddenly gone sideways.  
GThey eat, and as they eat they talk. Ben and Mina make some small talk about their fandoms and Trey finds a way to relate that to his fandoms, then Mina and Trey find similar interests in video games while Ben orders more food, and Ben and Trey get to talking about shcool and what they’re going to do with their lives as they sit and let their stomachs digest slowly..  
All the while Ben slowly stews on what I told him, that he has to find the difference between what it real and what isn’t real, and decide what is important. He recalls his talk with Mina earlier, wonders if that was important, if maybe I forsaw that. I sort of didn, but I can’t really tell him about that now can I?  
“You OK?” Trey asks. Ben shakes his head an looks up.  
“What? Yeah, I’m cool.”  
“Trey was just asking what if you guys didn’t go to college.”  
Ben blinks and looks over at Mina, who is picking at her remaining chow mein without looking up. “What?”  
“It’s not like we relaly need to,” Trey says, “People go to college to get jobs or whatever - it’s the modern formula for life. Well what if we just don’t do that? We can travel through fiction, maybe find somewhere else worth staying.”  
Ben tries to process this, tries to allow his mind to break the boundries of society and all that nonsense a poetic writer would write. “Like... meetafictive hitchhiking?”  
“Exactly.”  
“Wat do we do for... for food? For sleeping? For anything?”  
“food’s no problem,” Trey says, “even right now. I assume we were planning on paying, but - we could just zap out of here. Leave without paying, but to a realm where they can’t follow us or put us in jail.”  
“That’s...”  
“Sort of no good,” Trey agrees, “but it can be done, until we find a way to feed ourselve in a somewhat more... etchical? manner.”  
Ben looks over at Mina, who is still picking at her food and refusing to ive any sign that she as an opinion on the matter. “OK, but what’s the point? Where’s the goal, I guess?”  
“What’s the point of life?” rey asks. He pauses long enough to give Ben a chance to start to say something, then cuts him off and says “to have experiences. That’s the point of life. You aren’t born so that you can do all the proper society things, you’re born o you can experiencce life.”  
“That sounds like something a druggie would say,” Ben says.  
“Not like that - just to do things. To have experiences. Not getting high all the time, just doing things, like seeing the world and talking to people and playing video games. Except now we get to do more than just see the world - we get to see many worlds. We have the changce to see the universe, the multiverse, and we’ve got to take it.”  
Ben says nothing, thinking, though he can tell that’s making Trey impatient He turns to Mina again and says “You’ve been pretty quiet this whole time. What do you think?”  
“I think,” she says slowly, “that Trey is right about the point of life to experience things.” Treu fistpumps, which Mina didn’t know to expect as an actual action from him. “But I don’t know if thaat’s why we were given the machine, or lead to it or wahtever. I agree with Ben - what is the end goal?”  
“What is the end goal of life?” Trey says, clearly frustrated by what he percieves to be their narrow minded thinking. They come to no conclusion and eventually decide to actually pay for what Ben dubs the best Chinese in the multiverse and return to the machine.  
They can smell it when they’re only half materialized, and the smell only gets stronger. Something almost putrid siomeing from the other rooom. They all three cover their noses and Mina, in a funny voice, exclaimed “What is that?”  
“Oh no,” Trey says, and sticks his head out the doorway. Spot it sitting under the controls, and in the corner where he had been lying previously is a puddle of urine.  
“Your dog peed on my ship,” Mina says, stil holding her nose though now she can almost taste the smell on her toungue and that’s almost worse.  
“I’m sorry!”  
“You thought this was a great idea - why?” Ben asks.  
“I didn’t realize he hadn’t, you know, done his business laready.  
“And now he’s done his business on my ship,” Mina complains  
“It’s not really your ship...” Treys trie to defend himself, but Mina just glares at him over the hand that is pinching her nose closed.  
“How do we even clean this up?” Ben asks, looking around. “It’s not like we have any towels or washclothes or something?”  
Mina makes ehr way over to the contol panel, glaring at the dog sitting underneath, and quickly hits a few buttons on the desk. SOme of the settings change, and she rushes to the transport room. “Come on,” she says, “We’re so getting out of here.”  
Spot wuickly stands up and rushes, faster than they’ve ever seen him before, through the still open doorway behind Mina. He can’t tell them but I can tell you that he doesn’t like the stench any more tahn they do.  
“Argh, no,” Mina says, backing to the other side of the room, “I don’t ant that mutt in here, goss.”  
“He’s actually a purebreed,” Trey says, going over to his dog and hookng on the leash that had been stuffed into his coat pocket earlier, “Otherwise, yeah, I can see why you wouldn’t want him here.”  
Ben closes the door behind him and that only partially cuts out the smell. Mina, curretnly on the other ide f the small rom, nods at Ben and he flips the switch. This is his first time doing it do he’s mixed nervous and excited, though after he flips it he realizes that yeah it’s just like turning on a iht in a house, excpet at the end you’re in a different universe. no bigie.  
They end up in the game again, almost exactly where they were when they tried this some unknown amount of local time earlier. Except now Trey has a dog on a leash and the docks are a bit more empty looking because, Trey realizes, the ship that the main character would have gotten on the day efore have left. There are stil a few ships I feel the need to explain, but just not as many.  
“Well this doesn’t really change much,” Ben says, putting his hand down from where it had rested on the wall switch untill there was no wall switch. “We’re still comically out of place in a strange future.”  
“Except now,” trey says with a smile, holding up the end of the leash that he’s holding, “We have a dog.”  
Ben and Mina both think he is joking. They both think he is saying this as a ‘yeah but ow it’s even worse’. But they both see the smile on his face and ben asks “Wait did you plan this?”  
“You bet I did.”  
“What does the dog have to do with anything,” Mina asks, unpluggin her nose finally. “What, you got a dog even in the future and suddenly everyone thinks you’re harmless?”  
“No,” Trey says, “It’s even better. Just let me do the talking.”  
Ben finally notes dock security eyeing them suspiciously. He makes an ‘uh’ sound to Trey, who turnes to look at them as well, and they waves with his leash hand, almost beckoning them over.  
“Look,” Mina says, starting to sound worried, “I don’t know if this macguccin thing will work if we get separated, whic is what’s going to happen if we get arrested. We can’t get separated.”  
“We’re not gin to get arrested,” Trey says, with his smile. The securiy guards start jogging over, and trey adds “We might get arrested.”  
Mina is visibly worried “why am I doing this,” she asks, more to herself than to either of the boys, “You din’t need to be ere, Trey. This was supposed to be Ben and I hanging out and being awesome, I didn’t plan on any craxy argggh-” she cuts herself off, no longer even sure what she is trying to say. Don’t wrry, Mina, I get you.  
“Excuse me,” Trea saya to the approaching security guards, “Can you lead me to the nearest alien outpost office?”  
The securty guards give the kids weord looks. “Where do you come rom?” they ask, “Who authorizes you to be on the bay>  
“Do you see this?” Trey says, stepping aside o reveal Spot, standing on all fours and sniffing the air, testing what there is in this wenew place.  
The security guard flinches, as if to poke his un at him. “That’s an animal,” He sys, Ben starts to wonder if there is more going on than he realizes, which is stupid because of course there is more going on than he realizes  
“not hst any animal,” Treu says, “this is a dog. A real, life, dog. An I need you to point me in the direction of the nearest alient outpost station so I can talk to someone in charge.”  
“Uh, right away,” the scuroty guard sa, activsting something on his HUD and giving a coded mesage to an unseen responder.  
“Uh,” Mina whispers, “Trey? What the heck is gooing on?”  
“I said,” he saus, with a smile, “Trust me.”  
“The think is I don’t Not at all.”  
“Follow me,” the other security guard says, and Trey followes, so Ben follows him, and Mina folows him. Mina taps Ben on the shoulder and sas  
“I still really don’t like this,”  
“Trey seems to have everything under hand.”  
“ehat’s going on? Why is Spot special?”  
“I don’t know, just wait.” Ben refects on how impatient Mina can be sometimes when it comes to fiction, always wanting to fiure out thwat the story is before the story is willing to make is appaant.  
They’re eventually brought to an office, a large building on the edge of what Ben realizes is a platform. There are other platforms below them, viible off the edge and through a few grates that seem to connnext different sections of the platfor. Looking down, Ben can’t tell if he can see the real ground anywhere downt there. Maybe this whole station is just a huge manmade planet. Spoilers: it is. science fiction doesn’t skip when it comes to awesome things like space oatfors. We could talk about their virtual atmosphere but that woul get to tehncal and I don’t even want to think about craxy science things like that - just know that it is cool. I mean that’s rally the important part here.  
So they get into the office builing - whih is huge, by the way - and no one has talked to the kids this whole time. Theyve passed dock works who have stares and tehere have been a few whispers and someone pointed and Trey seemed proud of himself the whole way, but he is the one one who’s had any direction this whole time/  
Inside, the security guard talks to someone at a desk and there are people with papers at desks and running around - actually jogging from one sid o the room to the other, hurying from desks t other rooms and out of rooms back to desks. The kids wait in the center of it all, spot sitting down to scratch his ear. No one pais them any attention at firt until someone does, then a bit of the shuffling qquiets down until everyone, within minutes, is pretending to work, pretending to be doing something important, but sneaking glnces at not the kids bu the animal sitting at their feet.  
“Come with me,” a man says, having come out from another room to talk with the front desk. He motions to the kids to follow, and Trey does so, Ben and Mina behind him, lookg around almost appologetically at the ther futuristic peole who are failing to not be conspiculous.  
The other room is a larger office, almost too large to be comfortable, almost a small conference room. There is a second table acorss from the desk, as if he needs a lot of room to do his work, but the man, who ebn assume’s is important, has cleared if off beforehand.  
“The animal,” he says, “You wouldnt’ mind putting him on the tale would you?”  
Trey complies, still looking way too proud of himself for Mina’s comfort. He picks up the huge dog awkwardly, bending from his knees, and Spot actually does whateber e can to make it easier. He ends op standing o the table, equal in height to Ben, and the dog, feeling awkward, first sits down and then lies down on his stomach, head raised to look the other man in the eye.  
“Fascinating,” the man says, and theh he reaches to chake their hands, on y one. “I’m the direcctor of alien life services here on platform 100,” he says, “I oversee all the shipment in and out of the area, as I’m sure you’re aware.”  
“Yes,” Trey says, though ben had already shaken his head.  
“o,” The director says, looking very expantant. “There is no good information yet about who you exactly. Mind telling me your names?”  
Trey poitns to himself. “I’, Trey, this is Ben, and this is Mina. And, h,” he points to his dog.” THis is Spot. The name is supposed to be ironic.”  
“I can see.” Teh director says. “Alriht, so you have names. hat’s good, we’re no strangers to out-of-air names around here. I’m afrad you’ll have to d a bit more to explain yourselves tough.”  
“Of course,” Trey sais, “We’ll be happy to. You might want to sit down though.”  
The director pulls up a chair, Ben and Mina stay silent, and they all sit down.  
“So what is going on here?” the director asls, “How do three strange kids show up at our platform with an animal - a dog, of all things - in strange clothes, from seemingly nwhere?”  
“There’s a simple answer,” Trey says, leaning forward dramatically, “but you may not believe it. You’l need to have an open mind.  
“Alright,” the director says. Mina is terrified Trey is actually going to tell him the trueth and they’re going to get sent out of their, thrown into a madhouse, jailed, something/  
“We come from the future,” Trey says, and it was so much worse than Mina imagined.  
The director, however, raises an eyebbrow but doesn’t move, continues to watch, saying nothing.  
“A few hundred years, to be precise,” Trey continues. “Where the art of timestravel has been perfected. Obviously. We were sent back as voyagers by our people to this time and place, where we believe the most good can be done.” He waits now for a moment for the director to say something.  
“I’m not sure if I an fully believe that,” he says, then looks across the room at spot, still lying on the table with his leash hanging off, not a cre in the world. “But you brought us this animal for us to see,” he says, “so I guess I have to trust you.”  
“Thank you,” Treu says solemly/  
“So how come they sent you,” The director asks, “Three kids? Can’t be twenty. To be convoys from the future.”  
“Oh, we’re not kids,” Trey says, then smiles lie ‘oh but I can see whay you might make an ameature mistake like that.”Mina here is actually the youngest of us, at twenty=five”  
The makes as if to counter that claim but a look passes from Trey and she says nothing.  
“I am actually in my foty’s, Ben here only thirty two, which is why I’m leading this ecpedition.”  
“I don’t understand,” Says the director.  
“Futurre stuff,” rey says, “Technology has advanced. A lot. I know sometimes it may seem like there’s no more room left for advancement but there really is.”  
“Life expectancy has also increased,” Ben says, finally getting the swing of what’s going on. Not finally getting what’s going on - Mina dna Ben aren’t that slow - but finally figuring out how to play along.  
“Right,” Trey agrees, “The only problem is - things aren’t alll that great. And they could be better. So a decidion was made, to come back to this period of history and smooth over a few things that aren’t as perfect as they should be.”  
The director seems to digest this slowly and it’s an interesting plot to watch play out until Ben reminds himself that it is all a big fat lie. He almmost wants to chuckle, to laugh, to gaffaw whatever that means. The whole situation seems to flip back and forth between terribly hilarious and deadly serious and just really, overal, weird.  
“So this is how you do it?” The director asks, “to smooth oer this time in history? Bring us a dog?”  
That’s exactly what Ben was thinking. What the heck is up with the dg? why is everuone freaking out over it? What does it add to their werd story?”  
“Tell me,” Trey says, now leaning back dramatically, “When was the last time anyone in this quadrant saw a real live dog”?  
The director thinks. “At least a hundred years,” is his answe. “There haven’t been any animals out of the zoos in fifty, at least not recorded, and the zoo dogs had no way to procreate.”  
“And what if I told you,” Trey says, “That hope is not all lost? That there is life worth preserving smewhere?”  
The Director waises an eyebrow. “Do you know this?” he asks  
Trey, to cut a long story short, says yes, says that there is a planet somehwere far off where a small group of people have sheatered, hidden, taking the remain life of the universe with them. That it takkes hundreds of years for this planet to become to, five, for a great civilization to grow in the knowledge that everything can be fie.  
This he says, is what mankind has been looking for almost a thousand years for, This is the freat secret of the world, and if mankind can only discover it a few hundred years earlier, then they will avoid something horrible, that does not need to happne.  
“Something horrible?” the director asks, now alarmed.  
“Yes, there is a horrible event coming in the future. We read about it in our history books and dispare, and if only that can be avoided, history will be better off.”  
What sort of event?” The director asks.  
“I think you know,” Trey says, dramatically. Ben can’t tell if he’s supposed to laugh or nod knowingly, seriously.  
They talk a bit longer, Trey refusing to give any more details and the man trying to suss out what it is that Trey isn’t sayig. Its a war, by the way. The last half of the video game, which is how Trey knows it will happen. The man finally agrres to give them sleeping quarters for the night while he works to call together a group of, what Ben dubs, Really Important People to reconvein in a few hours. Trey, Ben, Mna, and Spot are lead to another building, wiithh similar archeteture, on another platform entirely.  
This is nice,” Trey says, wandering through the living area as the guards close the door behind them. Ben notes that it looks very much like normal hotel but ‘all techy and cool and cra’ which is cool but probably not what the far future is really going to look like.  
“Whoa,” Mina finally says, the first thing since she was freaking out an hour earlier. “Whoa. uh, whoa.”  
“you OK?” Trey asks sarcastically, smirking because he thinks he’s so cool  
“What did you do?” Mina asks, “You got us to be important people in your video game. What even? I can’t. How did ou even?”  
“I told you guys I had a plan. I know what I’m doing here, by the way. We’re making a difference.”  
“I thought we couldn’t make a difference,” Ben says, touching a few things and trying to figure out what something on the wall is. “Didn’t we decide that? We couldn’t make a difference in the way the story plays out.”  
“Well no, Trey agrees, “We’re not making a difference in the wy the story plays out. But we are getting free board, I’m going to assume ree food as well, and look - Spot has a place to do his business in now.” Trey points and they see Spot, free of his leash, wandering nonchalantly over to a side room, covered in what they’lll laer realize is fake sand and fake plants. The dog swuats, and the kids make a noise and look away.  
“If you han’t brought Spot we wouldn’t have needed a place for him to do his business,” Mina points out. Trey actually sticks his toungue out.  
“O think it’s kind of cool,” Ben says, tryong to b the peacekeeper in a way. “I men, you wanted to come here anyway, rght? And we were just worried about a way to fit in, but you figured something out and it’s pretty weird but it seems to be working. Even if it will have no long term effect, I guess we’ll still be able to matter to a bunch of important people.”  
“Yeah,” Trey says with a genuine smile. He sees what Ben is doing, appreciates him for it. “This is cool.”  
Mina rolls her eyes. “Alright, I’m not tired at all. I don’t want to sleep.”  
“Me neather,” rey trhows himself on a couch, “Lets see what they got” He excitedly gets to exploring the provided intertainment system. There is a sort of television, though Trey can’t figure out how to get it to work, and what looks like might be a sort of video game but when Trey stats it up, it turns out to be an alternate reality thing, taking up the entire room with virtual godness and even Trey freaks out a litle bit. It takes Mina’s hel to figure out how to shut it down.  
They spend the next hou just playing around with the different gadgets in the mini apartment. Mina finds a way to get the view from the large windows to change, Ben finds what might be a computer if it’s OS was anything similar to earthlike. Trey finds a minifridge, passes the foood around, they completely fail at figurong out how o eat some of he thing provided. The bedrooms are a bit more off-bases, but they mess around with some of the provided equipment and Ben figures out how to get the bedspeings to adjusts ridiculously well. Trey leaves his bedroom with a look on his face and decides he patio is much more interesting.  
Spot, this whle timme, is the only one not having a sort of spac attack. He has a place to ddo his business, which he is happy about, and the food dropped by the kids can be easily picked up, and there was plenty of room to jus meander around. Also, he had kind of figured out earlier that everyone was excited to see him, which was the first time in Spot’s life that he could remember people being excited ver hm,, at least since he was a puppy.  
The guards wo come to fetch the kids in a few hours catch them all on the couch, in various states of lounging, playing around with the internal wheather controls. They have no idea what tehy’re doing, and the guards, who have been told that these kids are very important guests, look at each other and begin a little to rethink their life choices.  
It’s not really important but one of those guardss has always wanted to be a fighter pilot, and the next day he submits his application to trnasfer to the governemtn office he works for. It is initially ddenied because his eyesight it a little subpar but he files aain for a different secotr and is accepted, spend the next five years training, and actually becomes one of the minor characters on the sequal to this game. Insert ‘we are all conneted’ nonsense here but I thought it was a cool factoid to share.  
The walk back through the platforms is long, as they’re lead to another building, further away. It takes about twenty minutes, passing though an area that seemes busier than usual. “PUblic district,” Trey says, his grin growing as he all but shows off Spot to the nerby peole.  
“You’re really enjoying this,” Ben says, pointless in my opinion because that fact was pretty apparent. Trey just smiles back and Mina crosses her arms in front of herself as they walk.  
The public building they’re brought to is swarming with people, and for every five people who stop to stare there is at least one purson who doesn’t give them the time of day. There is some processing dne, and they are taken to a large elevator, which is emptied beforehand. They ride for what seems like no time at all without moving and open up to see that they are now on the top floor of this skysraper.  
“This waym” Someone official looking says to bring the kids over to a large conference room. Trey has begun to get a bit nervous, though he tries not to let this show at all to the others. They are given prominent seats at a large table with at least twenty other people sitting there, looking at the kids closely.  
The kids are introduced by the director who they met the day before once again, he shakes their hands. Then he gives Trey the floor to speak.  
In a vouce that o ly Ben notices is shaky, Trey reitereates the story he shared with the Director the day before. Now, Ben and Mina are able to chime in more often, knowing more of the story Trey has set up. Men and Women lean forward to get a better look at Spot, who sit on his rear again, scratches his ear a bit, lies down, awhines at one point when he realizes he hasn’t been fed in hours.  
This goes on for about an hour nd it’s slightly interesting but not enouhg for me to want to transcribe it all. Basically, in a nutshell, Trey and the kids totally BS their way through this huge important meeintg with important people in the futureistic skifi city, showing off their dog, and the important people was on very impressed. In really, only about half the poelpe in the room are buying the story, but they’re fascinated by the idea.  
In about a month they will finally decide to send of ships to look for the planet Trey has mentioned, and they will find it, but it will in no way sto the war that is coming. Instead, they’re noing on it’s existence will help to preserve it. This is Trey’s real plan - he knows he can’t change the story, but he knows what happens in the story and he can doing something integral to it.  
The city officials, of course, are looking to keep these kid around and researces for a bit longer. They start asking questions the kids don’t fully know the anwer to and Trey barely manages to smoothtalk his way throuh this situation.  
Then someone wants to start showing the kids around - mpressi the convoys from the future, as it seems. Trey doesn’t know how to get out of this one so he looks to Ben for help, who sot of half shrugs, like ‘I don’t know, man what are we even doing anyway?”  
Mina wants to speak up, making some excuse about being tired, but she recognizes that they just had a few hours to themselves in which they were probably expected to have slept. That excuse wont work so well in this siuation.  
“Sure,” Trey says, quickly enough so it doesn’t seem like he’s trying to get out of it.  
“We could disappear,” Ben mumbles to his friend when they get some time sort of alone, ten minutes later, being lead through the tall city platform.  
“Jus trandomly like that?” trey says increduloudlly, “after we made this big show of ourselves? Suddenly vanish and no one knows where we went?”  
“Yeah? Don’t we do that all the time nowadays?”  
“I’m with Trey on this one,” Mina says, “We;re trying to accomlish something here? It wont work so well if their source of information shows up for a few hours only to disappear mysteriously.”  
“We can’t do anything,” Ben says louder than he intended. Their guide asks them if anything is wrong and all three of them downplay it. When the guide’s attention is diverted agaim, he continues, quieter, “We can’t accomplish anything. We try to change anything in the story, it will nly turn out the same way it as supposed to. Nothing we do is... is going to be anything that we aren’t destined to do.”  
“SO what you’re saying,” Mina says, “is predestination.”  
“What?”  
“Our choices here don’t mean anything because the outcome is predestined.”  
“I... I guess?”  
“No,” says Trey, “don’t wax philospophy with me here around to see it. Think of the children.”  
No one says anything for a few minutes, polietly nodding to whateer their guise is saying, allowing themselves to be shhown aroun another public are they really don’t care much about.  
“How long ahve we been gone?” Trey asks, and then cuts Mina off to day “And don’t give me any of that crap. Local time, to outselves. How long has it been?”  
“Maybe... at least a day. It might be midnight now if we’d never left.”  
“Let’s go back,” he says after a moment of thought. “I’m exhausted and I want to go home. We an pick this up again tomorrow.”  
“Here,” Mina asks, “return here in the morning?”  
“ounds like as good a plan as any,” and Trey taps the shoulder of the guide who has been prattling on for quite a while. Making the excuse that they’d like to return to their accomidation only confuses the an a little bit. When they’re alone in the apartment, they each grab as many towels as they can as well as what they think are waterbottles and materialze back on the ship.  
The stench is still there. Mina splashes he first bottle on the stop, discoveres that it is really some sort of juice, and covers the newly created mess in a towel. Trey and Ben follow suit - Spot, instead, hides by the doorway and doesn’t want to come out.  
“Just back home then,” Mina says, heading towards the control panel. The problem isn’t anywhere near being dealt with but there is an unspoken resolve to ignore the mess in the corner. Mina wants to be angry as she chges the control settings, since she has no idea how this can be cleaned up. She has neve had a dog before, and she as never had to clean up a mess without a simple way to refreash the twoels and throw things out. Cleaning up a ship in the middle of metafictive space with physically no doors leading to the nonexistant outside seemed like a daunting task.  
They show up on the sidealk again, but now it’s darker, almost night.  
“I’ll have to tell mom I was at your house,” Ben says,  
“I’ll have to say the same thing,” Trey agrees.  
“I can’t sleep on the ship,” mina says, but all I wan to do is sleep forever.”  
“You have evry hotel in the histroy of all fiction,” Trey points out, “Just appear insie and dsappear before anyone knows.” Mina points her finger, like ‘there. that is a good idea,’ and wanders off. Ben is confused until he sees her disappear, a hunded yards away. Must be some sort of distance thing for the macguffin, he assumes.  
Then they stand there agan for a few more moments, not knowing what to say to each other.  
“I’m wiped,” Trey finally says. Spot appears to agree because he is already lying down.  
“I’ll se you in the morning?” Ben asks. His friend nods, turns and waves over his shoulder as he walks off. Sot only reluctantly follows and Trey’s cool exit is killed by trying to drag his dog along after him.  
Ben goes hime, gives his excuse to his mom, eats dinner with her, is plesant. He realizes halfway during the meal, not as great as the multiverse’s best Chinese dinner but one of her best, that he’s not the least bit tired. If anything Ben feels buzzed. Not the drunk buzzed - or maybe, he’s never been drunk to have a comparison - or the really tired and laughing at everything buzzed, or really ecited because tomorrow the new episode airs or the next book comes out or the midnight showing is TONIGHT.  
He’s buzzed on the idea of possibilities. He doesn’t even know what that is, wat that means. He didn’t feel this when he first got in the metafictive machine, or even after the awe of it wore of and he got used to the idea. He didn’t feel this until he got back to this universe earlier in his personal timestream, and the feeling left when he left.  
The feeling, Ben decides, is cnnected with his own universe, the idea of possibilities here. And wha are they?  
He can’t sleep at all, so he gets online and tries to do his normal thing, spends a few hours browsing throuhg his blog. Things that probably would have amused his earlier don’t seem to anymore, however. He notes dully a new date released, finnally, after months of waiting for the fans.  
He picks up his phone and sends Mina a text, and even while he is doing it he doesn’t know why he has decided to do this. Hey, he writes, are you local, tempraly?  
And then he waits.  
The phone rings back a while later, no more than five minutes. Sort of, the message reads. I just dropped you off, right? Then I headed out somewhere else by myself. It’s been, uh, a few hours?  
Couldn’t sleep? he texts back, then adds where are you, even? Sleeping in this area?  
I’ve always wanted to visit Paris, is her response. I don’t think I sleep as often as you do. In fact, since getting this thing, haven’t been sleeping much at all.  
I don’t think that’s good for your health, Ben writes, bu this isn’t what he wanted to talk about at all. Can I ask you about something?  
Maube. Depends. Ask, I may or may not answer if it’s too dirty.  
haha, no. The author. She said that she was a different being that our creator? So I’m wondering... is that our next step?  
What, finding the creator? Finding the author was relavtive easy, I wouldn’t evem know how to find am omniscient being like whoever creeated us.  
So, what? We just ttravel and see different things? I feel like we should have an end goal.  
Mina doesn’t actually respond. He waits five minutes, which seems like plenty, and then five more. Finally, he adds, for some reason I feel like I’m surging with energy or potential. I can’t sleep either. Like there’s something I have to do first.  
It’s another five minute, but Mina respons. That’s how I feel too, she writes, it’s how I’ve felt, since the beginnig.  
Ben doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t And then after five minutes he realizes she’s proabbly waiting, so he writes I didnt realize that. It’s way too sort of a text for Benn’s comfort zone but he wants her to keep talking  
Mina actually calls him next. He answers the phone and talks quieter than his normal voice because he doesn’t want his mom to hear him on the phone through the doior. “Hello?” he answers.  
“So here’s what I’m thinking,” Mina says, and she suddenly sounds very self assured. “End goal - check. I mean, once we hit that there’ll obvously have to be something we ey to get afterwards, but our current end goal seems pretty big.”  
“Meet the creator?”  
“Yeah, we can totes start our own religion or something. I just want to find him or her.”  
“Because he or she has to exis.”  
“The author said there was a creator for our universe. No hint on how to get their attention but we’ve kind of got an guarantee that you’lll run into them at some pint so it seems safe to me.”  
“I think before I said I wasn’t going to say this again but you do reaize how absolutely crazy this whole thing has become, right? We’re fandom bloggers. I write fanfic and you do fanart and we’re half decent - I mean you’re really good but relatively unknown and we gotta fix that - and we’ve got to spend huge amounts of our lives focused on things that aren’t real and we never do of anything significant outside of the fandom because that’s just how it goes, Mina. That’s just how the world works.”  
“I di’t think,” Mina says very slowly, “That the world wootks in any one way or anything. I think you and I proved that some of our favorite fandoms actually exist in an alternate reality, so we can’t say we spend our whole lives obsessed with things that aren’t real.”  
“But they aren’t!” Ben finally says, much louder than he’d intended. He takes a deep breath. “I will willingly spend ten of the next forty years of my life doing nothing but sitting on my rear and watching the television sree r reading a book because I very much enjoy the activity, but I understand completely that those ten years worth of time will be wasted, thrown away into an oblivion of unreality. I will likely gain nothing from that time but personal enjoyment, a continuation of my sanity, such as it is. I have no illusions, Mina.”  
“It is real, the insists. “It’s as real as your memory is or as real as the peope on the other side of the world living their won lives who will never directly affect yours/.”  
“How,” Ben asks, growing exasparated.  
“Because you choose to make it real, in your devotion. You choose to give it vlue, Ben. That value coming from yourself isn’t fake. It isn’t worthless. It doesn’t do nothing.”  
“Doesn’t it,,” ben asks, his voice small, “if I do nothing? If it contributes to me, and I contribute to nothing, doesn’t that mean it was pointless to begin with?”  
Mina sighs, like she is trying eto explain a simple concept to a young cild. “You are not worthless. You don’t have to make a major contribution to the world to have worth, Ben. The small changes you make are big enough.”  
“What small changes?” Ben sighs more than asks.  
“you write fanfiction,” she says. “You take someting from your brain and leave it for others to see. Maybe someone will see some story you wtite, and it will inspire them to write something else, and the inspiration will snowballl. No one will trace it back to you but a revolution will be started in a third orld nation and a dictator overthrown and freedom restored. Because of you.”  
Ben wants to feel inspired but the conspet suddennly turned way too ridiculous. He snorts, a sort of not-really-a-laugh. “OK that got out of hand,” he says into the hone mic.  
“OK but I’m trying to make a pooint. There is way much more going on in just our little corner of the multiverse, you can’t know what’s really going on and you can’t help if you’re little movements have effects you don’t intend.  
Ben doesn’t say anything for a full minute. He is trying to decide if he’s going to accept what Mina is saying - this seems to be a common problem with him nowadays. He is also trying to find a way to get the conersation back on rck.  
“What about praying?” he asks, figuring the best approach is to just derail the train completely. “Gods are supposed to listen to prayers.”  
“We don’t even know if god is the right level of being, and I’m leaning toward no. Remember what our author said? We have to do something about the nature of reality itself.”  
“Our creator,” Ben gets an idea, “is just Our creator, right? He-”  
“-or she”  
“-didn’t create the entire multiverse, right? She or he jut created our unverse.”  
“Seems a logical way to look at it.”  
“So, they, they’re the one making be feel empowered like I am right now.”  
“Probably.”  
“Why do we have to get the creaotor’s attention?” Ben asks. “If theire omnisient or whatever, cant they see everything? Can’t teey see that we’re looking for them?”  
Mina doesn’t say anything but he knows her well enough to know hat she is taking this into consideration know, trying to figure out how this effects their lams.  
“Whoever the creator is, they’re probably trying to make us prove ourselves first.”  
“yes”  
They can show their face at anytime but instead, like the author, they are sitting back, waitinf for what? For us to prove... something.”  
“That we’re worthy,” Mina offers.  
“Maybe. that we wont screw up the cosmos by seeing the great plan or whatever. That we’re actually legitimately serious about this and not just screwing around, testing the boundries of... the counfdries of reality, I guess.”  
“Discovering fr ourrselves what i real or not, and what makes that distinction important,” Mina adds, repeating pretty much what I told them earlier. Ben nods, ven though Mina can’t see that nod over the phone line.  
“That doesn’t really leave us anywhere knew,” Ben says. He wants to sleep. Sleep would be a good idea about know, but hes still buzzed with the feeling of possibility and feels lik there’s something he shuld be doing about it. Something in this universe, not the multiverse, not metafictive space.  
“No,” Mina agrees. I’d say sleep on it but neither one of us apears able to sleep, I guess?”  
“I’ll think about it,” Ben says, and text you any ieas I get, and call you later if I feel the need to.”  
“Alright,” Mina says, “I can’t confirm that I’ll be in space if you text or call but it seems all my old messages finally show up once I... break back into range, or whatever.”  
They part verbally, each hanging up their phone separately in different parts of the world, in different times zones. Ben muses and waxes philosophic for a while but doesn’t come up with anything breakthrough or orth mentioning in my narrative. His buzzed feeling never leaves though so he lies in the ddark and tries to retell a story to himself. It is a practice Ben has, to try to fall asleep. look at a screen of any sort smulate his eyes too much, and he gets too excited trying to read a new book and seeng what happens in the story. When he can’t sleep, he turns all his lieghts off, bundles himself up so he’s comfortable, and mentally tells himself a story he remembers. Either from a book or a movie or whatever.  
He wakes up hurs later and repeats the same process he went through the day before, packing his back of things that aen’t for school, eating breakfast early, excusing himself with his mother. He lies to ehr and tells ehr he and trey are working on a big project - well, that part isnt a lie - and that’s why they’r spending so much time together out of class. He will try to call if he’s going to be home late, he promises. She kisses him on the cheak and he wipes it off when he gets outside because even though it feels like a nice gestures he still feels weird about it.  
Trey meets him just like before, dog in tow once again, but before he can say anything Ben cuts in “What if we don’t leave today?” he asks.  
“What?”  
“What if we stay on earth this time, instead of wandering around aimlessly?”  
“We weren’t wandering around aimlessly - we were becoming important figres in the history of my video game. We’re still in the middle of that, remember.”  
“We weren’t doing anything of the srot. We were BSing everything and making it up as we went along.”  
“Those two phrases mean the same thing, and I spent some time this morning thinking about what we could do today.”  
‘Well I did too-” ben is cut off by sort of apearance of Mina in between them, slowly materialzing. They both step back, somewhat shocke.  
“Hello,” she says, shipper, then looks down at the dog and narrows her eyes.  
“I made sure he already did his business,” Trey says quickly. “Ben dosn’t want to come along today.”  
“Yeah,” Mina says, “we were kind of talking about this already last night so this isn’t rlly news to me.”  
“What?” Trey gasps, “You guys were talking behind my back? While I was sleeping?”  
“We were friends first you know,” Mina says, though that isn’t quite true, and Ben doesn’t correct her. “What Ben and I have been thinking is that we need to find the person who created this universe.”  
“Why?” Trey asks. It’s an important question. Neither Ben nor Mina has an immediate answer, Trey sighs. “You knw, I never really took either of your for religious fanatics.”  
“This has nothing to do with religion,” Ben insists. But to be completely honest, he doesn’t know what it ha to do with. It’s more or less just a thing to do.  
‘What do you want to be when you grow up?” mina ass. No one can tell who she is talking to, because she isn’t really talking to anyone specifically. She’s sort of half talking to herself. “What do you wnt to do with your life? What do you want to accomplish?”  
No one says anything.  
“Everyone tells us that we’re supposed to be productive members of socity, but O think society is getting along swell without our help. Its not like we can change the world, because no one has the power to do that There are a handful of people on the entire planet who have the ability t act great change onv culture or whatever but even thay, over time, will be unable to change what unltimately happens to the world.”  
The other two sit and say ntohing, not knowing what to say. Trey wants to disaggre on some small counts butstays silent.  
“I dont know about you two,” Mina contineus, finally lookng up from her shoes and catching both their eye in turn, “but I’ve spent most of my whole life sitting on my butt, doing ultimately nothing with myself. I suspect tht’s what most people do with their whole lives. I don’t want to do that with my whole life. I wamt to do something, even if it’s just for myself, just to be able to say I’ve done omething. Soething has been done. So yeah, this is sor of a random plan. We have no real goal or focus. We want to find the creator who we’ve already proven exiss. Afterwards, you two can do whatever you want. I am going to ask him what I am supposed to do with my life to complete the Grand Plan.”  
Mina is done, so she crosses her arms and looks back at her shoes. It takes ben a moment, but he finally speaks up.  
“What if there is no Grand Plan? What if there is nothing you have to or are supposed to do?”  
“They I want to know that, I guess.”  
Ben recalls what Mina said to him much earlier. He recalls wuite often in this story. This time, it’s what she said after he gave ehr the first chapter of his story t be beta read. There is a purpose, she had commented, everything works together to accomplish something.  
So, Ben thinks to himsefl, Mina wants to find out whast everything’s working together to try to accomplish.  
“There are some stories,” Ben finally says, “that take pace in the real world, where the characters get to meet higher beings.”  
Mina dn try look at him, trying to understand.  
“Maybe some of those exist in this universe” he says, “Maybe there reallly in an instance of someone in this universe meeting the Creator. If there’s a story about it somewhere, couldn’t we find it and tell the machine to take us to those characters?”  
“We could do that,” Mina says, contemplating.  
“We’d have to do research,” ben says, “here. In this universe.”  
“Wait, what are we doing now?” Trey says, sort of shaking the leash a bit to subtle draw attention to the fact that he has a dog in tow.  
“Search for instances of people meeting higher beings. Either in historical record, or fictional stories. The machine will be able to bring us to any instance we send it toward.”  
“Research? Like-”  
“In a library or something, yes.” Trey groans, loadly, and Spot looks up, concerned. He doesn’t really know whats going on but I think that goes without saying. Spot is a dig. Sog’s do not understand the english language, or any reall human language for that matter.  
Let’s stop talking about Spot.  
“Or Google,” ben adds. We could all grab laptops and meet somewhere together.”  
Mina reminds Ben that they need something solid to give the machine. He nods knowingly like ‘ooh that’s right. yeah’  
“I don’t want to go to a library,” Trey whines. Spot looks at his, hearing the tone in his voice, wondering if something is wrong. Except oops, I forgot we weren’t going to talk about spot.  
“Fine,” Mina says, “You want to go to school today?” trey pouts, because yeah, no, he really doesn’t.  
The local library?” Ben asks. Mina gives him a devilish gin.  
“I was thinking a bit bigger.” Before either of them can protest, she proessed the button on her necklace and they are back ito the sickly gren room. now New and Imporved with Sickly Smell! “Make sure you don’t leave that animal in here this time,” MMina says ans she fiddles with the dials. Ben pokes his head out of the transport room to see that Mina has sort of cleaened up the animal mess in the corner. There is still a smell and obvious evidence of whaat took place, but in her buzzed time alone she must have done something to clean the mess.  
Otherwise they all stay in the side room while Mina works on the machine, then rushes back, closes the door, flips the switch, and they are back on earth. Ben can tell because now that buzzed feeling is back inside him.  
[Insert something about getting rid of Spot because keeping him along isn’t helpful for the rest of the story  
Mina does a ‘tada!’ pose to present the place she has brought them to - the New York Public Library. The largest library Mina could think of on the top of her head.  
“Library,” she says “with all the books we could ever want or need! Coe on!”  
She lead them inside, even though Ben has come here once before and Mina has barely ever left the west coast. Everyone however is extremely impressed, and doesn’t know much of where to start. A library attendant comes up to them to see what it is they want.  
“Um,” Mina thinks, having not actually decided where to start.  
“Religious fiction,” Ben says, “if, ah, there’s even a section for that.” The attendant smiles and nods and is overall very helpful like attendants are and leaves the kids when they promise they just want to browse.  
“I have no idea where to start,” Mina amits when they’re standing facing the shelf. Even having it narrowed down this much isn’t helping the decision making process.  
“Just,” Ben whispers back, “start at one end and read the book descriptions.” Mina sighs.  
Trey, however, sighs more deeply. It’s like a sighing contest all up in hee. “You can not expect me to read through all this...” Trey doesn’t know what to add, so he doesn’t, hoping not to offend the older gentleman standing midway through the aisle, loking at a cover, who they can’t tall if he can hear them or not.  
Ben turns, glances around a bit, then points, “Look,” he says, “library computer. Use the computer.”  
“No, dude, you need a card or whatever to use the computer. I don’t have a library card here.”  
Ben notes the ‘here’ adjective and says “Well then go get a library card, it can’t be too hard.”  
Trey just stares for a moment and says “I am not getting a library card here. No way.”  
Mina finally cuts in at this pint, saying “yeah, I don’t actually think it’s as easy as it sounds to get a lirbary card for the New York public library. I’m pretty sure there’s a waiting periiod or something.”  
“Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea,’ Ben says, “this library is too big-scale.”  
Hld on,” Mina says, and then they disappear. Trey groans loudly.  
“Why do we keep doing that? Popping in and out of wheerver we are? Can’t you give us a warnig? Can you stop plopping us down in the fiest place without thinking things through?”  
“Soryy,” Mina says distractedly as she fiishes materializing and ducks into the other rooom. Trey sighs and they wait and in a few minuts they’re actually standing in another library. This one is much smaller, notically different, but still larger than the one Ben is used to. “Wait here,” she says, motioning for Trey and Ben to stay standing by thee bookshelves labeled Engineering.  
Mina returnsa second later and sayg “OK, I got us a computer.” she motions them over to a workstation and they both give her signnifacnt looks. “What?” she says, “I happen to have a card here so... it’s not too hard.”  
“This is your schoo,” Ben says, realization comng, “You brought us to your school library?”  
“The only large library I have a card for, sory, mister. Sit down,” and she practically forced Trey into a chair in front of a computer in a corner. She points to the screen meaningfully. “OK,” she says, “You are going to do a catalogue search for this library for books that involve meeting God, OK?”  
“I don’t want to be that kid on campus who doesn’t even go to the shcool who’s using the libaray computers to look up religious nut stuff.”  
“Then don’t let anyone see you. Ben and I will be going through the books, and we’ll bring some here from time to time, just to hod them.”  
“That directly counteracts your ‘don’t let anyone see you’ thing just now. Like, those two sentences didn’t fit togehter at all.”  
“Come on Ben,” Mina ignores Trey and forces him to turn around and walk away with her, “You take religious fiction - over there - I’ll take relgious fanaticalll literature.”  
“What?”  
“Just go,” and she pushes him, not too hard, so he stumbles into the crowded row. I say crowded but there weren’t any other actually people there - he rows are just very close together. He picks one book out at rando, looks both ways, and then glaces down at the synopsis.  
The book turns out to a romance novel. “Wow,” Ben mumbles, to himself, “what are religious romantic stories even likfe?” He considers taking it just to see but realizes he doesn’t actually care, and put it back.  
Looking both ways again, Ben moves to the end of the shelf, the beginning of the section, and pulls the first book down. Another romance. He hoeps this whole section isn’t just romance nnovels.  
By the end of that paticular shelf on the rack, he would have thought maybe it was, if it wasnt for the two or three books with actullly intriguing, non-romantic plotlines. He digs through that first rack, onto the second, starts the third, feeling very odd and entirely unsuccessful. At that point a girl comes down the aisle, sees him, and nervously smiles, pushing back him to look for another book. Ben’s awkwardnes reaces new heights. He dosn’t want domesone there to watch as he pulls books off the shelves one by one to read over them.  
So instead, Ben tops where he was and cuks back to the desk where Trey is sitting, bored, scannning through the computer. He seems a bit startled to see Ben coming over and, Ben notices, quickly closes whatever he had open.  
“Any luck?” Trey asks.  
“None,” ben says, “or I would be carrying a bunch of weird metafictive books for you to see. What about you what are you doing?”  
“Just uh, researching-” bythis time Ben has moved around to see the screen of the computr, and is not surrives at all to see it is on the desktop.  
“Reasarching? I’m sure everyone in the video game forum is very good at researching,” says Ben, reading the name f the closed window on the toolbar. Trey glares, playfully, then opens the window back up.  
“I’ts not like your girlfriend actually had anything for me to do really. I’m bored - this is boring.”  
“I thought you didn’t believe in online friends.”  
“I’m not friedns with anyone on these forums - I don’t even know how that works still you weirrd me out - we just discuss common interests I don’t happen to share with anyone close at hand.”  
“Whatever, coot,” Ben says, pushing Trey’s rolling chair to the side and rolling another one ove, to take ove computer use.  
Ten minutes later when Mina comes over, Ben is sitting at the compter, browsing through databases, Tey at his shoulder laziy wathing.  
“You look like your dog,” Mina says. This doesn’t break our promise to stop taling about Spot because Mina actually says it and I have to report that fact. “What are you doing, Ben? You’re supposed to be looking through books.”  
“Yeah,” Ben says, noncommital, “I tried that. Didn’t really work out to well for me” He finally looks up to see Mina is only carrying one book down in one hand.  
Mina looks down at the book and then slides it onto the desk. “I se what you mean, she says. “I got this one. Seems, uh, sort of promising.”  
Ben takes it, examines gthe weird unhelpful cover, flips it over to read the back. It’s a near-death experience. The author says she died, went to heaven, saw lots of awesome stuff, met God, was sent back in order to write this bok. Ben actually snorts.  
“You said something about all fiction being true somewhere?” he asks, doubtful.  
Mina shurgs, “eh maybe.”  
“Why am I here?” Trey asks for maybe the fourth time that day. Mina ignores him once again. “Ben, there might actually be somehing helpful on that aisle, you should go back and look.”  
“It’s the religious fiction section,” Ben says with a huff, “I’m pretty sure it’s sacrelig to write a book about characters meeting god. This-” he gesutres with his shoulders to the computer “-seems like a beter approach.  
“An approach Trey was supposed to be working on ‘cause I figred he would like it better than actuallly letting him be seen looking at religious books. You gotta chill on that, by the way, Trey, because it’s not like poepl here are going to hate ou for it or judge you. They dont even know who ou are.”  
“You never know,” Tey says, “some cute college chicks could come by, like reverse cougurs or something, I don’t want to look bad for them.”  
Mina opens her mouth to speak, says nothing.  
“Wouldn’t the sci fi boks be better?” Ben asks, “or fantasy or someting? And wouldn’t it be better to have a list of books were looking for rather than go through every book on the shelf?”  
“So you want to take over computers?” Mina asks.  
“And Trey can do book fetching,” Ben agrees.  
“Do I get a say in this?”  
“Yes,” mina says, “You say Yes, OK?”  
“I’ve already got a small list of books that look promising,” Ben says, pointing to a word processor he has opened. “If the boks in the library are organized by author’s last name, it shouldnt be too difficult to find them.”  
Trey grydingly gets up while Ben sets the paper to print. Mina gives trey a dime - “You’ll need it for them to give you the oage” - and he saunter off, looking half asleep. Mina takes his seat.  
“What, you did a google search for ‘meeting god’?” she asks.  
“Google books,” Ben clarifies. “Trey seems to have closed the tab with the library catalogue so I cant really use that.”  
Mina leans over to helo him back to it, and hey spen dthe next twenty minutes compiling a new list of books until Trey compes back wih a small stack.  
“They didnt have everything,” he says.  
“That;s OK,” Mina hands him another dime. “Ben’s ringing out a new page, go pick that up and fine the next books.”  
Trey sighs dramatically, but trudges off. As the only extrovert in the group, Trey really shouldn’t be the one working alone, but que sera sera.  
The next list of books is written on the originall piece of paper, hnaded back to trey without a word. The stack growing on the table beside them is growing, but not as much as Mina or Ben would have hoped. Mina marks the ones they don’t have, then writes down the new boks Ben trudges up from the internet.  
This continues for a length of time Trey isnt happy about and eventually Ben and Mina become bored with, so I wont make you sit here and read about it for much longer. Ben shakes his head when Mina asks if he can find anything else, at all. They have multiple staks now on the desk beside them and a bored Trey plopped down on the floor, thumbing through one of the more interesting titles.  
“This doesn’t seem like very much,” Mina says.  
“Enough to worry any librarians who might wonder by,” Trey mumbles from the floor, “Don’t they have to put these all back? Ugh.”  
“We don’t even know if any of these will work,” Ben reminds them. “But it shouldn’t take too long to find out.”  
“Just just the universe dial, right. Well, I’m half asleep and ready to go if you to are.” Mina stands up, stretches dramatically. Trey tries to pick himself up off the floor and it takes him almost five whole minutes.  
“How are we carrying all these?” Ben asks. As an answer, Mina picks up one stack and almost cuddles he books to her chest.  
“That’s the easy way to do it, I guess.” Ben follows suit. Trey alost doesn’t just out o defiance but takes the last few books, balances them on his forehards as he yawns. Ben looks away hoping not to catch it but ends up yawning as well.  
Mina awkwardly catches the necklace to press the button, and when they arrive Ben notes that the books don’t feel as heavy in his arms, and the room, instead of being the usual sickly green, is almost a throw-up pink. It’s very subtle, but Ben begins to wonder what it is that makes the color of the room different when they return from different locations.  
It still smellls though, if faintly, so they have to ignore that as they follow Mina into the main room, the other room, and put their books down on the empty space of the control panel. There isn’t very much empty space. Ad now it’s all gone.  
Mina breathes deeply, a ‘alright here we go’ preparedness breath, then sputters it out because gross. The air doesn’t have that same putrid scent but it is uncomfortable.  
“Let’s just start at one end,” Ben suggests, taking the first book of the stack that Mina carried in and handing it to her, “and work throguh to the other end.”  
“Seems logical,” she says, then places the book down carefully in the scanning tray. It takes a few seconds to caaataogue it or whatever that thing oes and when it does it reset the settings on the control panel. All three kids lean in and watch as the universe dial rotates.  
“no this one,” Mina breathes,” taking the book off and handing it to Ben, who hands it to Trey, and gives her the next one. The also play close attention to this one, leanin in again to watch the dial, seeing it roatae. It doesn’t return to the earthh universe.  
This continues, Ben giving th used books to Trey, who sits down and holds them steady in his lap, and giving the new books to Mina. SHe tries one after another, their excitement deminishing as the process goes on.  
At one point, Mina puts a slim volume on the trey, one of the ‘ofter death experience’ books, and they watch as the dial rotates, coming t a full stop. Mina stares at it while Ben prepares to recieve the book.  
“What’s wrong he asks.  
“Isn’t that earth?” she asks, pointing. He looks at the dial, then up at the moniter.  
“It looks like it coul be-”  
“Half of them look like the could be,” Trey says, standing up. He points to a notch on the dial, three notiches over from where it is currently set. “This one is earth. It’s exactly at three-o-clock but down one.”  
Mina scrunches up her eyebrows. “I dunno,” she says, “I think it was this one.”  
“I don’t actually remember,” Ben admits. “Um, keep an eye on that one and reset it to where we last left from.” Mina does as he says and the dial moves, though slowly, to three o’clock, but one down.  
“See?” Trey says, sitting back dwn and putting his hands behind hia head, “Just like I told you.”  
Mina is mostly impressed to see that Rtey has figured something out that she had forgotten about, but makes an impressed ‘hmm’ and says nothing else. She hands him the book directly and he puts it back on the stakc he has been growing on the desk beside him.  
The next book is put on the scanner and the dial dosn’t even move at all. Mina almst doesn’t catch that fact - they’ve been so used to these books not wprking for the past ten minutes she almost didn’t expect that they would work at all. Ben prepares to take the book from her, and stops when he notices what she sees, at exactlyt he same time.  
“Ths one!” she says excitedly, pointing, Trey stands up again and leans forwad.  
“This book worked?” he asks, looking down to see what is in the trey.  
“Yes!’ ben fstpumps. to be honest, he was beginning to grow tird.  
“We’ve got one!” Mina slaps Trey in the shoulder, a sort of ‘well done everyone even thoguh in this instance he didn’t do ery much. It’s OK - he actually got all the books to begin with, so he can be excused for that.  
Mina sets them down and they end up in the plains somewhere. “Um,” Ben says, “Where are we?”  
“Did non of you evn look at the book?” Trey asks, holding it up for them to see even though Ben didn’t realize he had even taken it with them. The cover looks like a hand painted picture of a Native American painting, complete with pictograph sun, mountain, and stick figures.  
“Oh,” mina says simply. She looks around them again.  
“We’re in America at least,” Ben says, with a jjoing luagh. “Hmm.”  
“True tails of the Native Americans,” Trey says, reading the back. It’s a part of a series. This one is about a couple of Indians who see the Great Spirit himself.”  
“Native Americans,” Mina corrects. She looks at Trey, who doesn’t understand that she is correcting him. “Tehy’re Native Americans, not Indians.”  
“I dn’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not one for political correctness.”  
“It’s not political correctness - screw politcal correctness - it’s just correct. Indians live in India. Columbus thought they were in the East Indies so he call the natives Indians. Then they realized they weren’t and couldn’t think of a better term that was less than six syllables so they kept the name even thoguh it was grossly incorrect.”  
“Whatever, does it matter?” Trey asks. Ben already knows what Mina’s response is because he’s gone through this before. She nods at Trey seriouslly, lowering her head a bit like ‘of course you dolt’, then points her thumb at her collarbone. Trey is about to raise an eyebrow, confused, until he realizes Mina’s own personal connection to this term.  
“Oh,” he says, “Uh,”  
“Right,” Mina says, nodding knowingly again. “Native Americans. And they see the Great Spirit who we’re hoping in the Creator.”  
“That’s what they believed,” Ben says, looing around. The plains look very... plain. There was grass all around, some trees in the distance, what looked like a few hills. He didn’t see any Native American steelments, or anything else to indicate where the characcters of this story might be. “So, uh, what now?”  
Mina and Trey look around as well, seeing only the same things Ben saw. “We could try walking around,” Trey says, “They have to be nearby right?”  
“That could take us out of their paths. We should try calling to them. Our voices will carry over the lains, right?”  
“Tht sounds a bit dangerous,” Ben says, but before he can say anything else, Mina shouts.  
“HELLO!” she calls, cupping her hands in hopes that it will make her vice travel further. “IS ANYONE THERE??”  
“Mina!” Ben says, “What if there’s a wolf or something that can hear you?”  
“I’m pretty sure if there are animals nerby,” she says, “yu’re suposed to make a lot of noise, so they don’t get frieghted if you stumble on them accidentally and attack.”  
“Yeah,” Trey agrees, “I, uh, remember hearding that somewhere too.”  
“Well what if they hear is and think we’re dangerous and attack?”  
“The Natives?” Mina scoffs, “No, see, Native Americans are actually nice and don’t ust attack everyone they come across. that would be the Europeans.”  
“Woah now,” Trey says, putting his hands up like he’s calming a horse, “Don’t be fallling into negative European stereotypes. That’s too boring and obvious everyone does that.”  
“OK,” she says, watchng the horizon, “to be fair, us Asians tend to be pretty hostile at times too. I think the Native Americans were actually the exception to he rule, at least the plains kind. Lok-” she points, and Ben doesn’t see anything t first.  
“What,” he asks, and she shakes her head and points again.  
“Not at the horizon, closer. Like, a mile away.”  
Then Ben sees it. Seeiming ly out of nnowehre, three horses have risen up from the ground, ridden each by a person. They aren’t nearly as undressed as Ben expected them to be - in fact, the only reason he can tell they’re Native Americans and not modern day Americans is their skin color is a few shades darker than normal, their clothes are a bit more natural looking, and one of them only has hair on half of their head.  
They were riding quickly towards the kids, who instictually move closer together.  
“If we die here I’m killing you,” Trey says. Ben silently agres until he realizes he doesn’t know if Trey is speaking to him or Mina.  
When the Natives get closer Ben can tell there is one woman, a man carryin a Tomahawk, and another Man, with half his hair, with an arrow already notced in a bow. He grabs Mina’s arm. “I thought you said they qouldn’t kill us,” he hisses.  
“Well we’re not dead yet are we?” She puts her pamls up, smiles nervously at the horsemen who have now reached the kids and are riding aroudn them, in a circle, trying to size them up. The boys follow suit.  
ONe of the men, the one carrying the Tomahawk, says something to them n a language noe of them understand. “Uhh,” Mina says, then turns to Ben. “it seems there isn’t any language translator on the Metafiction machine.”  
“Or there is,” Trey says, “And you just didn’t turn it on.”  
“True,” Mina says, then ylps a bit at the man jumps down of his horse. The horse backs up a bit, and the woman jumps down t join him The bowman stays on his horse and circles more slowly.  
The man says something else, and Mina shakes her head, trying to communicate the fact that she doesn’t understand. She points to her mouth.  
The woman now steps forward, cocks a head, and says “Whiteskin?” Ben and Trey nod enthusiastically, even though this fact is sort of appparent for obvious reasons. The woman then points at Mina and says something else in her own language.  
Mina shakes her head again, then points to the boys beside her. “No,” she says, “English, uh, like these two. Dark skin like you, English tungue like them. We’re friends.”  
The woman gives Mina a look, then turns to the man and they speak together for a moment. She turns back to Mina and says “You... whitskin, like... whiteskin?” She poitns to the boys, and Mina does the ‘eh sort of kind of not really,” face and hand gesture.  
The situation genuinely confuses veryone involved and it takes a bit more broken communication to resolve the fact that Mina is not in fact a Native American but and Indian and not their kind of Indian (using the correct term is important), but I wot go into all the details. The womna, htey discover, knows a few words of english, the tomahawk man none, and the Bowman, for all intents and purposes, never even speaks.  
The woman tries to explain that they are on their way to a holy mountain, and Mina enthusiasticaly requests permission to follow along. There is come conference but eventually they seem to be given permission of a sort. The bowman returns his arrow to his quiver and slings his bow over a shoulder. The horsemen get back on their horses and start off in one direction, but slowly. Mina leads the boys in following behind.  
This begins the walking portion of their journey. The kids follow the horses, walking silently over the plains, taking it all in. The horsemen talk loudly, laughing occasionally, except for the bowman who is silent the whole time, looking around.  
“I think they’re married,” Mina says to Ben, lagging just behind her. “Either that or brother and siseter, but I sort of hope not becuse I’m leaning toward married.”  
Trey, walking a few feet beside Mina, pulls out the boook and starts flipping through it. “I think you’re right,” he says, “Says that it was a man and his wife who saw the Great Spirit. Doesn’t say anything about a third In - Native marican, or about some weird kids from the future who happened to sart taggin along.”  
“Does it say anything about where we are?” Ben asks. His breath is already starting to come a bit short. He doesn’t know how much more excercising he’ll be able to stand.  
“No, Trey answers, “But the story doiesn’t talk much about their journey. Not very many details from what I can tell, actually.”  
“Well, I’m sure some got left out in the retelling as well,” Mina says.  
“Oh,” Trey says, continuing to scan the book, “Apparently she can’t get pregnant. That’’s why they’re trying to see the Great Spirit in the fisrt place. Huh. Wouldn’t have guessed that - they seem to like each toeher well enough.”  
“SHe coud just be infertile,” Minna adds. Ben is concentrating on breathing and says othing.  
“Well, she gets pregnant afterwords, so I don’t thinl that’s what it is.”  
Mina contemplates for a moment, then sas “Maybe he’s infertile. Maybe the Great Spirit-”  
“Ugh, no, shut up.” Trey says. He closes the book and slps it bck into his jacket pocket. “We;re not going to talk about this anymore.  
Ben nods silently even though he wasn’t talking in the first place.  
They continue to walk for another hour, until they can see mountains growing tall nearby. “Must be the Appalacians,” Mina muses. Ben involuntarially gasps.  
“You OK BUddy?” Trey asks. Ben tries to speak but his throat is starting to feel closed. He gasps again, spots walking. He doesn’t have asthma, he reminds himself, his throat isn’t actually closing. But he drops to his knnees all the same, trying to get his breath back.  
“ah, wait!” Mina calls out to the Natives on horseback, They turn to look at the kids and the woman autmaticallyw heels around, galloping quickly to meet up with them.  
“No,” Ben manages to say, trying to tell them, no, he’s OK, but he can’t manage much more. The woman jumps off her horse and kneels down to check ben, forces him to straighten his back and tip his head back. He finds that doing so opens his airways much bette.  
The calls out something in her anguage, and the bowman rides to meet her, dropping down while his horse is still moving like a boss. He crouches next to tew ouman, confers with her, and reache into a saddlebag, producing a flask. A lethery flask thg.  
The woman pushes it to Ben’s lips and speaks a word he doesn’t not know but recognizes as ‘drink’, so he does so. It has a hard time moving ast his throat, but once it hits his stomach he feels better automatically.  
The woman says something and laughs, and makes him drink more, then gies it bag to the bowman,, who returns it to its bag and climbes bck onto his horse, trotting back to the other man who watches on.  
“You OK?” Mina asks.  
“I can breath,” Ben sasy, standing up shakely. “I don’t kno what she gave me but I can breath.:  
the woman beams at h, and Ben quickly shakes her hand, thanking her profusely. Trey’s breath is also a bit short now but he’s not exhasted like Ben was.  
The woman returns to her horse and the natives start of again, slowly now to make sure the kids can keep up easily.  
“What did she give you?” Trey says stupidly, consulting the book as if it might contain the anaswer.  
“I have no ida,” Ben says again. “Some sor of original energizer thing - it’s amazing, that’s all I know.”  
They keep walking, following the natives, and as they do so Ben doesn’t feel the weakness in his legs coming at all. It is another hour, slowler than before, and his breath never grows short, his limbs never grow tired. Ben becomes almost afraid that whatever she gave him was some sort of steroid. I don’t know enough about traditional medicine to confirm or deny.  
The mountains they are walking towards grow larger in that time, until it becomes obvious they are going to climb up one  
“I can’t climb up a mountain,” Trey says, breathing heavily now, “This is ridiculous.”  
“The great Spirit probably lives at the top,” Mina says, “Dieties are always at the top of mountains. We’ll have to climb up, Trey.”  
“I’m pretty sure the Great Spirit isn’t at the top of the mountain,” ben adds, “but everywhere a all times. The mountain is just a cool feature to get your head in the game.”  
“I am not climbing up a mountain,” Trey reiterates.  
The sun sets an undisclosed amount of time later, and it turns out Trey doesn’t need to. With the sky orange, the Natives get off their horses and wordlessly (or english-lessly) istruct the kids to climb up instead. Tghere is a path, they see, running from the bottom of the mountain winding up to the top. Each native guides their horse, the Bowman guiing the horse Ben is riding, the woman guiding Mina’s horse and her husband with Trey, along the path. Mina expresses thanks over and over, understood even though the language isn’t by the woman. Ben doesn’t know this, but Mina’s legs had been getting very sore.  
The sky gets progressively darker as the night wears on, to a faded pink then a deep blue and darker, but no stars appear in the sky. ben notices this paticularly because he had wondered hwo many starts might appear above the American plains on a vlear night. He comments to Mina, who looks up, as if she didn’t even ntice.  
“OH wow,” she says, it must be cloudy or something.”  
The natives look up as well, seeing the kids reactins, and there is a bit of small talk only they can understnd.  
Ben doesn’t know how much time passes until they reach the top of the mountain, a wide and mostly flat area, as if a giant had slice the top off a cone of dirt. The kids slide of their horses, rub their legs from the new kind of soreness that caused, and loook aroung.  
“I don’t see any great spirit,’ Trey says. Mina shushes him.  
“Are you kidding me?” she says, “If it’s the creator, coming down to viit us, he’s not going to want to listen to your stupid comments.”  
They wait for a while more, looking around, then the Natives begin to pitch a few tents. The moonlight is barely shinig through the cloudcover, so Ben can barely see as hr explores the clearing at the top of the mountain. There are a few scraggly trees, mostly bushes, a mix of grass and dirt. He upsets a rabbit at one point, and it goes scampering off in the other direction.  
“I hope this doesn’t come to nothing,” Mina mumbles nearby. Ben can see her but can’t make out her features.  
“If so we’ve got pletny of time,” Ben says. Mina shrugs.  
“Yeah,” the says, “But It would be awesome if we could get everything here. One stop shop or whatever.” She looks around aat this point, and asks “isn’t there something we need to be doing, to call down the great spirit?”  
Ben looks bak and see sthe Native woman standing outside, holding something u to her chest. He can barely make out the fact that she is mumbling somethig.  
“Traditional chant, ritual>” he guesses.  
“Probably,” Mina agrees. They wander closer, find Trey standing over by the horses, patting one on the nose. Mina is about to make a joke, but suddenly the sky makes a cracking sound, like it is ripping open.  
“It’s him!” Mina shouts, her voice filled with Glee.  
“No,” Bene says quicly, “it’s a lightening storm.” There is a flash of liht in one corner of the sky, and a few seconds later the sound hits them. Like lightening. Seew aht I did there?  
The natives now all look more on edge. The glance aroud makes ure everything i in order, heck the sky to confrim that, no, it is not raining. There is another flash of light and acompaniying boom/  
The woman’s chant grows louder as the wind picks up, and ehr husband goes to join her as Ben and Mina watch The horses are understandably skittish, and Trey tries to calm them down, even though ultimately he is not really a horse personal and doesn’t know what he’s doing.  
The lightening continues and Ben can hear that it grows closer and closer, until auddenly it’s right over them. He falls to the ground, instictively trying to protect himself. The man tries to pull his wife back but she pushes him away, and screams towards the heavens.  
The next bolt hits a tree towards the egde of the flatland. The woman’s chanting stop and everyone stares at teh tree for a moment as nothing happens.  
Suddenly, it brst into flames.  
Trey curses loudly and Ben thinks he sees a deer scampering away and the natives all step forward, enranced. They speak excitedly to each other and Ben goes to follow them, but over the wind he hears Mina sigh.  
“What’s wrong?” he asks.  
“That’s not the great sspirit,” she says, “or the creator or anything. It’s a freak of nature that they’ve gotten caught up by.”  
“I think the Natives are more in tune with Nature than us and less likely to find it strange or odd,” Trey points out, shouting from behind.  
“Maybe the storuuy got twisted over time,” Ben says, “e already know it was edited a bit - it doesn’t include us, or the fat that there are three eople.”  
Mina, however, makes another disappointed sound. The wind is still howlling and the temper on the mountaintop is not kind at all, but she manages to trudge over towards the tents and sit down on a log, chin on her hands.  
“We’ve got plenty of time to find another book,” ben says, joining her, “or to look harder. This probably would have been too fast anyways.”  
“Maybe,” she just mumbles. Trey joins them as well, still a bit sppoked, and Ben looks up to watch the man and wife hdancing before the fire. not ‘ritual the great spirit’ dancing but ‘so elated just heard great news can contain it’ dancing. It’s eqully fun and strange to watch.  
“I wonder what theyre excited about,” Trey says, “do you think that was supposed to be a sign? Theyre trying to have kids, how does a tree catching fire mean they;re going to have kids now?”  
“I dunno,” ben says, “Maybe the book got that wrong as well.”  
They watch for a few more minutes as Mina decides what she wants to do, then she tands up with renewed purpse.  
“Come on,” she says, and strides purposesfully, with purpose,t owards the fire crackling in the branches of the tree. Ben and Trey hurry to join her. A branch falls from the tree and the natives step back, but the grass is dry and it is mostly dirt and the fire does not spread.  
The stop to watch, however, as the kids step forward. Ben has no idea what is going on, but Mina takes them to the other side of the fire, far enough away from the natives but close enough, and in the light, where they’ll easily be seen.  
“Out your hdans on my shoulders,” she innstucts,and the boys do do. She pulls the necklace out from where it i hidden in her shirt and presses the button. The begin to materialize into the skip, but as they do so they can watch the face of the natives, growing in onfusiona nd awe.  
Then they are standing in a room what is aalmost apale mud brown and after the outdooorsy smells leaving their nostrils, they almost can’t tel that a dog peed in the other room earlier and it never really got cleaned up.  
“What was that for?” Trey asks.  
“Give them a show,” Mina says, “it’s the least we can do for them watching over us like that. They’ll think we wre the Great SSpitir, or we got cuaght up by it or were sent by it or something. Pad up their story, I don’t know.” She meanders into the other roonm, and though she didn’t sound paticularly sad, she walks in a dejected manner, not giving up but considering it. The stack on the control panel was undistrubed of course, and she sits down in front of it with a sigh befor even turning to check if she’s being followed. She puts the next book on the trey and the machine scans it. The universe dial shifts severla notches.  
Ben doesnt ask her if she’s OK, or if she wnts to talk about it. He figures she’ll get used to disappointment in this area. They try another few books and everyone is a bit tired but not enough to stop, as they hacn’t been going at this far long enough to have exhasted themselves.  
They work in silence, Mina not talking, unlike the norm, and Trey nor Ben wanting to ress her or pry. They get to the end of the sttack, and then the end of the final stack, without any of them casing the universe dial to point back home.  
“Ugh,” Mina finally says, leaning back in her chair and utting her feet up on the consoe, “This isb pointless. There arent any at all.”  
Trey is flipping through a few of the books they’ve already tried, looks at the desciptions. “Huh,” he says, “because this one sounds really pormising if only it had been on earth.”  
Mina gives him a sideways look but Ben recognizes that Tone. Trey has an idea.  
Ben says nothing, though, and allows Trey to set up, to start messing ith the dials and triggers. he watches on. Mina tried to ignore him at first but ends up watching him as well.  
Waht are you doing?” she asks after a few minutes. Trey is strill trying to get that machine figured out.  
“Look,” he says, getting the machine to lock on to one of the characters in the metafictional novel he is holding in his hands. He points to the monitor. “They meet their Creator at the end of their book, see?”  
“But it’s not the creator,” Mina says, “theyre in a different universe”  
“It’s not our creator,” Trey agrees, “but stay with me here.” he adjusts the time display, following the character on the monitor as they go through the events transcribes in the book in Trey’s hands. He stops to flip open into the book check the past frew chapters, find the page where that factefull meating is described, looks at the even ts surrounding it - stuff that takes longe to do that tod sat.  
By the end, he manages to lock onto the character as they meet their creator, which they can watch through the stiltedness of the time dial. The creator in that universe, it turns out, takes to sitting in a throwne room somewhere and being waited on and meeting characers like a sort of interglactic king. The kids exchange looks.  
“What do you want to do with this?” Mina asks.  
“Oh you know what I’m thinking,” Trey says with a grin. He stands p. and Ben slides off of the control panel cleared spot he’d been sitting.  
“No,” Mina says, refusing to move. Now she’s the one being silly and difficult. If I was there I could tell her this is a nnessecary part of the story. “What’s the point of this?” she asks stupidly, “So someone in another unierse met whoever it was that created their universe, big whoop, that doesn’t help us at all.  
“Mina,” Ben says, He created a universe. From Metafictive space. Don’t you think the Metafictive beings would know each other, know about each other and how to get in contact with them?”  
At this point Mina is just trying to be difficult, probably becuase her spirit has been broken a bit She does put her feet down, though, and huffs and says “You want to go takl to some omniscient being fro the wrong universe? Go right ahead. I’ll follow along I guess - you’ve followed me along.” She stands up reluctantly and goes out of her way to prove how annoyed she is by this situation, but Trey ignores her and leads the way into the other room, waiting for them both to enter before flipping the switch.  
They show up, automatically, in the throne room on the universe of the wrong creator. He is sitting here, eating popcorn from a plastic bowl and watching a televission et that takes up the entire opposite wall. It hurts Ben’s eyes to look at the screen.  
“Hold right there,” he says, holding a hand out to the kids, this is my favorite part, I’ll get to you in a minute.” The screen continues and the kids looka round, confused, trying to take in what they’re seeing and waiting patiently.  
The Creator, a giant type man in either a really nice bathroobe of an interesting kimono, laughs hysterically at something on the telvision, wipes away tears, and pulls out a remote to pause what it is he’s watching. He dusts the popcorn alt off of his hands into the down and turns his attenions to the kids.  
“Well now,” he says, voice booming,”I half expected you to show up at some time.”  
Ben wants to reponse, day something leaderlike, but he finds he can’t even use his voice. Trey clears his throat and half steps forwaard and manages o day “Uh, you did?” wich no one find very leaderly or helpful to say but everyone but Trey himself forgives gven the circumtances.  
“You’re the earth kids,” he says, “92475, I mean. There are tons of actual Earths- I cal this oe Earth too, though it’s not the most populated planet in creation. I dnt pride myself as a copycat.”  
Now no one knows what to say and the large man in the throne continues.  
“Word around the metafictive stream is that you thre are trying to meet your creator. Lofty goals but I hear you guys even have yourelves an author attached, is that right?”  
Ben nods, then manages to squeek out a ‘yesy’.  
The man nods as well. “That the case, then I have high hopes for you. I figure you’d come around somewhere like here, another universe, where it’s easier to get in contact with someone of my opistion.”  
The kids look at each other again.  
“That’s not going to work,” the man says, “shy and quiet like that - speak up!” his voice is booming and Trey almost shouts ‘Yes, sir! out of fear. “I wont just assume,” he man continues, “so do any of you want to tell me what it is you’re hear for?”  
Ben feels an elbow in his back, judges it is from trey. He clears his throat unnessecarily and awkwardly, and says “Um, yes, uh, we were wondering...” he hesitates and the man makes an expectant sound. “Wew were wondering if you could, uh, tell us what it is we , uh, need to do to m-meet our Creator...?”  
“Your creator?” the man says, as if he has no idea what Ben is talking about. “Please elaborate.”  
“The, um, person who creatd our universe...?” ben suddenly wonders if they’ve been approaching this whole idea wong.  
He is reaffirmed when the man says “Oh, I see...” in an overly dramatic fashion, and leans forward in his seat lie he’s a mob boss in a melodraa. “And you think I can help you? You’re not even beings of my universe, you know.”  
“Yes,” Mina now says, getting courage in her throat, “we, uh, realized that.”  
The man is unable to hold back a chukle, then leans back. “Let me telll you what. Normally I’m not in the business of helping people - II’m in the business of being helped by people. That’s the reason this whole thing is here.” he gestures in a circle around and as he does so, the walls of thr room fllash with scenes of Earth, or alt-universe Earth.  
“But you happen to find me in a charitable mood. I’m also bored and getting to watch you guys scurry around through metafictive space is fun to watch, for a time.”  
He pauses now, intending this to be the moment where he is thanked profusely, but it takes the kids a moment to catch up. They’re not used to this whole dynamic. Trey is actually the first to take the hint and says “Oh, yeah, thank you-”  
And then Trey is cut off by Mina sayinng “YES, thank you, very much-”  
and which point Ben says “Very much, thanks, yes-”  
and finally the Man himself decides they’ve bored him and continue talking. “Generally, even in an exchange for information I would make you provide me with pyment, something I want for something you want. However, I can’t actually think of anything you guys might have o be able to do that I would want. Don’t, by the wy, take that as a copliment, because it isn’t.”  
He pauses for another moment and this time Trey has no idea what he might want them to say, but it’s OK because he’s really only pausing dramatically and because he loves the tension it cuaes.  
“You want to meet your overseer, then?” He finallly says. “It’s not simply done. Many beings like me are perfectly OK with letting their subjects confront them personally, even having conversations like we’re having now. But there are also many who don’t like being talked to, who tend to shy away minions like yourselves. And there are even some people who hide themselves away complitely, make it impossible to contact them, refuse to connect with you beings at all.  
Luckily, I know your chap, and he belongs in the second group, not the third. First groupers like me are obviously the best but second groupers can at least me accessed when needed. I’m assuming you going out of your way to acomplish this feat means it’s paticularly imortant to one or the other of you?”  
The kids shuffle their feet and say nothing This time, its like he didn’t even notice.  
“Well,” he continues, “the first thing you have to know is that your overseer may very well not reside on any physical plane you can access easily.”  
“What does that mean?” Mina manages to ask quickly enough.  
“It means that, unlike me, he doesnt have a rom in a temle set up on a mysteriious vanishin island on your planets ocean. It means I can’t just give you GPS coordinates and expect you to be able to find him.  
“what I can tell you is this: he likes cookies.”  
“Cookies?” ben ays, not sure if he heard right.  
“Yes. Chocoalte chip - classic is best, he says. If you want to impress him, convine him to allow you to get close, you have to bring an offering of some sort, and I suggest chocolate chip cookies.”  
Ben mentally catalogues this and nods. “OK,” he says, “we can do that.”  
“but where do we take the cookies to?” Mina asks, “if he’s not on the physical plane?”  
“You guys have a travel machine, right?” the man asks. This is acually a pointless wurstion, by the way, because he knows the answer already. He can technically see it with his non human eyes and has been able tow atch them in it for a while.  
Ben nods. “Mina found it,” he says, carefully leaving out the ‘stole’ part.  
“That should be able to help you,” the overseer says. “There is a setting to allow you to access non-temporal locations. Areas within the universe that are invisible to the phsycial eye. You find that setting, activate it, adn your overseer will light up like a beacon.”  
Mina says nothing but she thinks about tht. She has been tinkering with that machine control panel for she doesn’t know how long and she’s rpetty sure she’s wellf amiliar with it but she isn’t sure she knows what he’s talking about.  
The man may or may not know that she is thinking this - I dont really know the extent of his knowledge - but if he does know what she is thinking, he ignores it. “Piloting the machine to reach him may prove a bit tricky, but there’ll be a way to do it if you play around with the settings for a while.”  
“And that’s all we need to know?” Ben asks, hesitant.  
‘For the most part. I’m not in the business of being anything less than a little bit vague. remember to stay within your own universe. Your overseer can not enter another’s world, so he wont be in another’s world. Just like I can not visit your version of Earth, though I can watch it from the metafictive space outside of it. Look to your own universe, find your overseers, bring him your offering, ask him whatever it is you wanted to ask him, and try not to bug him too much. He’s a nice guy generally but he can get a bit touchy at times, especially when somethin unexpected happens.”  
The kids nod and once again Ben begins the thank you very much’ train. The overseer waves his hands dismissively and say “no problem, really”, amiles, ad waves again. Suddenly, without any warning at all, the three kids are standing within the control room o their metafictive machine.  
Ben blinks and looks arund. The smell is still there and it wasn’t bothering him much before but it i now.  
“What.” Trey says stupidly. Mina hesitantly touches the control panel.  
“It’s real,” she says, “he really just shot us back here. Quickly like,”  
“Wow,” Ben says, then “huh,” and sits down. There is still a stack of books sitting on the desk, and he idly turns one over to the cover is facing up.  
“So,” Trey says suddenly and loudly, “That seemed to work out, ha?”  
Mina snorts. She doesn’t want to accept that Treys’ idea had led them to an important ste forward in their quest but, you know what, awesome as you are Mina, Trey is a good character too and he can’t just sit on the back burner this whole narrative and do nothing important. He’s got more important stuff coming up as well. So she doesn’t want to accet it but she also has to accept it because that was a thing that just happened.  
“That was good thinking,” Ben says, somewhat distracted because he is still thinking about what to do with what they were told. “That never would have occured to me.”  
“That’s because,” trey sits down and leands back, sekf satisfied, “Society has taught you how to think inside the box. video games teach you how to use everything you’re given to find the best possible solution.”  
“Is that your life adive?” Mina asks, “Play more video games?”  
“Maybe. I dunno, you guys seem really iterested in books and movies and TV and such - and sure, whatever, that’s all good. But you spend hours sitting and wtching other people do things. I spend hours sitting and watching myself do things. Video games are more personal - you control the story, you make decisions.”  
“Within the set bounds of the programing,” mina says. “It’s not like a magic fix all. You can’t think outside of the box in a video game because there is no physical ability to reach outside of the box.”  
“Maybe,” Trey shrugs, “but definitely do more playing an awesome game than you two do watching an interesting TV show.”  
Ben listens to their conversation, and it occurs to him that Trey has practiced this psuedo-speach before. He can tell by the tone of Trey’s voice, more controlled than usual. he can also tell because bits and pieces of what he is sayin sounds familiar to Ben. Sounds like something he heard before, when he wasn’t really paying attention at lunch, at school, sitting together in the cafeteria.  
Mina is starting to feel both accepting of trey’s idea and defensive of her own point. “Ben and I don’t just passively sit by,” she says, pointing at Ben and herself, trying to include him in the conversation. “We’re active members of the fandom... We create original works. we writ and draw and participate in discussions-”  
“Don’t video games have fandoms too?” Trey says, sitting up now, more heated. “Isn’t there fan art, fan fiction, just the same? I’’m in the forums almost every day-!”  
“Guys,” ben interupts, actually holding a hand up in an attempt to cool them both down. “Guys,” he says again, “shush, I’m thinking.”  
“Right,” Mina says, and turns to the control panel. “I’m supposed to be figuring this out, aren’t I? fidning a way to - what, reach unvisible space or something?”  
“The cookies first,” ben says, “No point in getting there if we don’t have that offering.”  
“right,” Mina says again, “Stop by a bakery somewhere down there in reality. We’ll probably want to order a whole bunch. Dunno how much an omniscient overseer will want to eat, better to err on the larger side.”  
“Are you kidding me?” Trey says, looking up at Mina with part disbelief and part pride in himself.  
“What?” Mina asks, not knowing what he’s really refering to. Hearing this, Tey puffs up a bit more, corssing his arms and smiling.  
“Not much,” he says, “Just suddenly becones a bit obvious who the real best frined is, is alll.” he adds an imaginary gold star to his imaginary proof of bestfriendship card in his (not imaginary) wallet.  
Mina looks t Ben. “what is he talking about?”  
Ben is a bit embaressed about this, but obviously Trey had been thinking about it just as much as he himself had so he fesses up. “My mom,” ben says, “she has this cookie reciepe. We could use that.”  
“That’s not thw whole sory,” Trey says, prde spilling over in his voice. “This recipe. Itt is. The best. No joke You eat storebought cookies and they’re OOK and you eat homemade cookies an they’re nice and you eat the cookies that Ben’s mom makes you want to die because you know you will never again be satisfied with another boring chocolate chip cookie again.”  
“It’s alright,” ben tries to be as modest as he ccan, “It’s an OK recipe-”  
“Mina,” trey loks her in the eyes as seriously as possible, “I hope that you know our good friend Ben here well enough to know that he is speaking out of his butt. It is not an OK recipe. it is not an alrigt recipe. God himself gave this recipe to his deciples forever years ago and it sent most of human histroy locked away in secret, guarded by an army of monks, ntil they forgot what it was they were giarding and Ben’s mom stumbled upon it somehow.”  
“they’re no..’ Ben tries to say, but he’s caught between wanting to be humble and wanting to agree with Trey because he is pretty sure Trey speaks the truth. it’s a bit harder for Ben to know this since he grw up eating those cookies - he would get cookies at schol rom other kids moms and be very confused as to why they didn’t taste as amazing as his mothers.  
Mina just loooks at Ben with wides eyes. “I have to try these cookies,” she says. “Why have you n ever told me about this?”  
“It, uh, it never came up? I son’t know, I don’t really talk about my mom’s cookies very often.”  
“if everyone knew about these cookies,” Trey says, “There wuld be a mad rush, a stampede. People might die.”  
Mina quickly turns around and presses few buttons and dials and doo-dads on the machine quickly. “next stop,” she says, “Ben’s house, I guess.”  
“We’ll have to make them,” Trey says, “it wont be as great as Ben’s mom’s, but she’s probably busu and we can’t make her make them all on her own.”  
“The three of us?” Ben asks, nervous, as he follows them into the other room.  
“YEah,” Mina says, “we can just tell her I’m a friend from school.”  
“My mom knows all my friends from school,” Ben says, then gestures at Trey. “She’s smart enough not to buy that, especially since she’s never heard of you before.:  
“She’s never heard of me before?”  
“I got it, Trey says, preparing to slip the switch on the wall, “New kid in class, suddenly partners for a presentation in... French?”  
“I’m taking Spanish.”  
“Partners for a presentation in Spanish, and you wat to impress the cass because the class is grading you. therefore: cookies.”  
“Why are you with us then?” Ben asks. Trey picks that moment to flip the switch and theres a few hazy moments until they fully appear on the overused sidewalk.  
“MMoral support,” Trey finally says, “Can’t have you hnging out with a girl I don’t know until I get to inspect her for myself. Plus: cookies.”  
Ben shurgs and begins to lead the way to his house. “Yeh,” he says, “I guess that mkes sense.”  
The walk isn’t very long and within a minut they are standing in front of the nice two story suburban house, gren lawn and a tree and bushes that need trimming because Ben keeps forgetting to do it. The driveway is empty; his mom isnt home yet.  
“What time is it?” Ben asks.  
“Four fifteen,” Trey says, “if my watch is working in this universe.”  
Ben unlocks the door with the key he has cliped to the inside of his bag, and closes the door behind his friends when they come inside. Mina glances around, taking in the moderately sized house and the clutter brune from two sons and a single working mother not taking more time to c;ear out around the rest of the things they’d rather be doing. She nods approvingly.  
Billy calls something from the other room though and Ben has to shout that he has friends over for the younger brother to poke his head around the corner of the wall.  
“Sup Trey,” he says, staring at Mina. Trey responds and Billy glances quickly at Ben then disappears behind the wall again.  
“That’s Billy,” Ben says to Mina, “who youv’e heard about.  
“YEs,” Mina says, remembering some not-so-flattering things Ben shared over his blog some time ago. The pass the living room where Billy sits on a couch, game controller sitting unused his his lap has he texts something quickly, and head straight towards the kitchen. Ben starts to show Mina around,  
“Actually, she interrupts him, “and I use your restroom?” THere’s the usual ‘oh sure’ thanks - where/’ awkward shuffle and Ben directs her to the second door on the left - because bathrooms are always on the second door to the left - then he and Trey work on finding Ben’s mom’s recipe book.  
The search proves fruitless when Mina comes bcak, so instead they dig into Ben’s regrigerator and eat some fruit cups until the door opens and Ben hears his mother returning home. Theres a bit of call and greet and Ben comes ou to meet her.  
“I’ve got a couple friends over,” Ben says, subtling emphasising the plurality. “Trey, and a girl from Spanish class. We’re doig a presentation this week.”  
“oh,” she says, delightfully surprised, and Ben introduces her to Mina, who is a touch older looking that Ben’s mother expected but still believably in high school. They shake hands and Mina endevors to remember Ben’s last name.  
“So you’re reapring for your resentation to night?” Ben’s mom looks between them expectantly.  
“Actually, we’ve got the presentation down... kind f... tonight, though, we decided to lmake something for the class. it’s peer graded, so I fiured if we made the class cookies, we might get higher grades.”  
Ben’s mom nodds knowingly. she also grew up with those cookies so doesn’t realize just how amazing they’re supposed to be, but she knows that everyone whos ever tried them has told her that they weer the mos amazing things they’ve ever tasted. She knnows Ben knows this as well. His tehnique is clearly seen.  
“Alright,” she says, “but if you make a mess I want you guys to clean it up. I guess this means I should get take out for us all to eat for dinner. Do you want take out?” She directs this question half at Ben and half at Mina, knowing Trey will eat whatever she feeds him.  
Mina looks at Ben. They consider the fact that they just had the most amazing chinese food in the multiverse just the day before, according to local time, and anything thye eat so soon afterwards will pale in comparison  
Ben’s mom of course doesn’t know what they’re thinking but she sees the look. “Not takeout, then,” she says.  
“I jut had Chinese food recently,” Mina says, truthfully, “and there’s only so much Chinese you can have at a time, right?” she adds, lying through her teeth. You can never get sik of American made Chinese food. it is physically impossible.  
“How about I get Mexican, then?” the woman asks, and the three kids nod in agreement.  
“Before you eave,’ ben asks, “can you how me where your recipe is?”  
She pulls out a recipe book sitting on a shelf and flips it to the right page, an handwrittn insert, and then gets their approocimate orders and hauls Billy off the cuch and forces him to come out withher. They leave the house almost immediately and the kids get started working on the cookies.  
The recipe calls for several ingrediants Mina didn’t expect at all. She pulls out the flour and organizes what Trey and Ben bring to her, carefuly examining the ingrediants she never expected to go into cookies. I would tell you what they are but even I don’t know - apparently the multiverse does not want me to know how to make the best cookies in existance. Dmn. It was worth a shot, at least.  
They caht as they work, mostly about stupid stuff, the kinds of things that kids talk about o whatever, and Mina tells a story that gets them both doubling over before they’ve even cracked anything open to start pouring into the first bowl.  
Ben’s mom and little brother retun just as they’re starting to stir the first wet ingrediants together. Ben insists they be hand-stired with a latsic spoon, with Trey forces Mina to do because it is way too time consuming in his opinion. She sits at a stool and works at looking through all the fridge magnets, giggling to herself at some of the dorkier ones and trying to figure out who the people nin some of the photos might be. Mina’s fridge in her apartment is covered in her own and her roommates artwork and reminders from class, but at home with her famiy their fridge is almost bare.  
Ben’s Mom brings the food to the kitchen table as Trey clears off a spot for it, then she and Billy take their styrafoam doggiebags to the living rooom to watch a movie together. Trey starts digging in as Mina stirs and Ben prepares more ingrediants, Then Mina goes over to see what there is.  
“oh,” sh says, a bit disapointed as she opens her doggie bag.  
“What?” Trey asks, mouth full.  
“It’s just... this isn’t really Mexican food.”  
“What are you talking about?” Ben aks, glancing over from his spot at the counter. “Tacos. Mexican food.”  
“OK,” Mina sgres. “Tacos. And french fries. It’s jut... in California, we have real Mexican food.”  
“Made by actual Mexicans, I hear,” Trey says.  
“Yes, having hispanic people prepare hispanic food helps, just like having chinese people run the chinese place helps. Never mind, it’s food and it looks alright.” She removes ehrself to a part of the island coutner where there is more room and sits down to eat. Trey finishes quickly, just as Ben is getting started eating, and moves to work on the next step of the recipie.  
“Don’t get any of that into the batter,” Ben warns, then threatenes Trey to wash his hands. Mina is glad to know that fake taco meat is not intended to be art of the best ever cookie recipe.  
And then they continue to cookie recipe. Oven gets preheated and dough slwly is formed - more slow of a proces than Mina is generally used to - and then they start to prepare to form the cookies.  
This is a very serious process,” Trey ifnorms Mina, nodding like he is imparting great wisedom onto her. “It takes skill and recision and years of practice to perfect. If you don’t preform this alst step just right, the entire effect is wasted.”  
“It’s not like that,” Ben says, “the cookies will be fine if you mess up, but don’t worry, I’ll do all ths work.”  
“What?” Mina asks, thinking Trey had been joking. “If I mess up? You just take the dough and make a ball and flatten it, right?”  
Trey scoffs. “If you want to make OK cookies, cookies a unviersal entity wouldn’t dare of eating because theyre boring in comparison.”  
“It’s seriously not hat big of an issue,” Ben assures her, “Trey always does this but my family, we have a way of forming the cookies that he jokes about and its no big deal, we just like to do it our way.”  
“I once tried to help,” Trey says sagely to mina, “and make half of the batch using the normal grab and roll method When Ben put his batch in, he took mine and redid them.”  
“What?” Mina almost doesn’t believe it and she almost does.  
“True story. Would not let those cookies get gooked.”  
“You were being a butt about it,” Ben says defensively, “I was just trying to make cookies and you were making a big deal look, you’re even making a big deal about it now. You brought it up. Just let me make the cookies, al right?”  
Mina laughs and says “of course” and just watches. She muses on the fact that she knows so much about Ben that Trey doesn’t know but after finally meeitng him there is more she has gotten to know. That’s all very nice and poetic but the point of this story is to be interesting, not to wax philosophic every ten pages, so we’re going to leave that at athat.  
BEn puts the irst batch in, makes the second as Trey yaps on about something or other, then replaces them when the first btch finishe. They go onto ths stove to cool and Trey stares at them like there is nothig better in the word he could wish more.  
“We’re making these for a specific reason,” ben reminds his fried. Trey shurgs and desn’t take his eyes on the cookie sheet.  
“I’m sure mr voerseer wont know if we jsut eat ne or two.”  
“Each? This is barely four dozen, which may seem like a lot to us but probably isn’t much to an omniscient overseer creator being.”  
“Iat least Mina needs to ty on,” Tey argues, “She’s never had these amazing cookies before, and if she goes the rest of her life without knowing what these taaste ike, she will never have really lived.”  
Ben sighs and watches the clock on the stove count down. “Yeah, i meant for us to have a few anywas,” he says, “Especially Mina. But at least wait until they’ve cooled.”  
The waitin is unbarable for Trey but she just watches him, amused, as he spreads himself out over the island, looking almost dead, glacing between the cooling cookings a d the clock on the walll that will tell him when tey are done. Bn prepares a plate to carry them with, a large plastic platter that wont threaten to break, and t hen carefully starts placing the cooling cookies on it. He stops when there are six cookies left.  
“half a dozen,” Ben says, :two for each of us, unless I give both of you one of mine-” He intends to keep talking but Trey knocks something into the sink as he jolts, then grabs three off the cokkkie sheet and stuffs one into his mouth.Ben and Mina watch with amuzement as he sinks to the floor in glee.  
“You can have three,” ben says to Mina.  
“Are you sure?”  
“Of course- they’re my cookies, I get to eat them all the time, tyey’re from our super rare recipe. And if you don’t Hurry Trey might take yours.”  
There isn’t really a gander of that - Trey is savoring that one cookie in his mouth as best he can, letting it melt slowly in his mouth. Mina braces her self as she picks her first one up, not knowing what to expect. Part of her is fraid that she will bite into it and it willl taste horrible, end up being the worst thing she has ever eaten, that this whole thing has been an elaborate gg.  
Instead, when she bites into it, she can fully understand why trey immediately sank to the floor. Ahe kind of wants to as wel, but doesn’t in an attempt to maintance her dignity. She doesn’t even talk as she eats it, but as Ben is cleanign up and Trey is on his second, hshe swallows, amkes sherit’s past her esophagus, and slowly says ‘this. Is THE best thing. I have ever eaten. In my entire life. hands down.”  
Be just grins up at her, but Mina is startled by a sound behing her. She turns to see Ben’s mom coming down the hallway, aslo smiling.  
“Aren’t they?” she says to Mina, “that’s what everyone tells me, that they’re the best ever.”  
They are,” Mina assures her, “The absolute best.” Trey picks himsef off the floor, half waves at Ben’s mom, somewhat embarreseed for himself, but there is one of the best cookies in the multiverse in his mouth and he can’t hardly think.  
“Did Ben tell you the story behind that recipe?” Ben’s mom asks Mina as she goes into the frigdge to grab something to drink. Mina shakes her head and suffs anoother one in her face when she isn’t looking to make Mina feel awwkrd.  
“It was my grandmas recipe. She had a bakery, so I think she came up with that on her own. She bakes for a mym, made all the recipes in that cookbook there. Then my mom, who ahd the cookbook, forgot the recipe and couldn’t find it. The book was lost for several years until she lost all her money - long story - and we had to move. I was barely a toddler. She had to pack up everything in the house and stumbled upon it, hidden away where she would never have found it if she hadn’t had to clean the entire house out.”  
“So it was good luck,” mina says, dissolving dough still in her mouth. Ben’s mom unscrews the cap off a botto=le and nods before taking a gulp.  
“Jus the way life is sometimes. So now the recipe is mine and Ben will inherit it when he moves away - I’lll still keep a copy of course - and we can go back to blessing the word with its presence, as Trey wuld say.”  
Thi is an obvious opening for Trey but he still has the remains of the third and final cookie in his moth and doesn’t want to riskk opein it.  
“So is youre presentation tomorrow?” Ben’s mom asks. It take Mina a moment to even remember what she is talking about then she gives an enthusiastic ‘yeah, ok course, yes.”She makes something up to pretend abotu how totally prepared they are. The woman stays in the kitchen to chat for a little while, trying to defriend the girl she thinks in Bens new friend from schoo, then finally excuses herself to go to her room, leaving the kids alone in the kitchen with the cookies. Ben quickly finishes putting all the nw finished cookies on the platter and covers them in plastic wrap, and then a large towel so Trey wont get at them.  
“Nws the perfect time to get out of hee,” Ben says, “Billy’s back to his game so we can zap straight to the machine can’t we?”  
“Yes,” Mina says, pulling out her neckace, then she puases and stops them so she can get a drink of wter and Trey follows suit. Then they zap out of thhere,  
“Alright,” ben says in an in-charge manner, “One step closer to finding the oversser.”  
“Not really,” Trey cuts in, “that wasn’t really a step closer towards finding, that was a step closer towards getting our end result.”  
Whatever, ignore the technicalitys,” Ben puts the platter down on the last clear surface of the control panel, holding it partilly with the wasteband on his jeans, and reaches over to pick up a stack of book. He scoots the platter so it’s more steady.  
“This part is all me, Mina says, stiing at the chair by the desk. She cracks her nuckles like a hacker in a sci-fi movie and then places them down on the typing area like a hacker in a sci-fi movie even though there isn’t a qwerty keyboard here. Then she shiffts them to the side because that was a pintless movie and she sort of needs to actually focus here.  
Bn takes the books in his hand over to the wall - the wall opposite the doog pee wall - and places them down and out of the way, then goes back and does the same with the other two stacks. Meanwhile, Trey has taken the other seat and is thumbing through the book he was looking a earlier, pretending not to be reading it. He puts his feet up on the console and Mina kicks them off and he does it again and she leans an elbow down on his ankle until he yelps in pain and turns the other direction.  
For a few minutes Ben fushes around, trying to do something while Mina workes, but there’s nothing to do and hes’s bored.  
“Have you found anything yet?” he asks Mina.  
“o.”  
“What exactly are we looking for again?” Trey asks, and this would be the perfect time to go oer all that again if you the reader needed a refreasher on their current course of work. Mina, however, just ignores him, and Ben has to reiterate the fact that Mina needs to find a button or dial or switch or something that she ahsn’t used before.  
The tinkers around for another five minutes, trying to combain settings. She does several things that seem to have no effect and several times over she takes the earth globe at he bottom of the screens and rolls it over quickly, trying to scour every inch of it to see if there’s anything she didn’t catch before.  
“Any luck?” Ben asks hesitantly again, because he’s sill bored and she almost looks like she’s taking a break.  
This time she huffs before saying “no” and she huffs again and continues, saying I have no idea what it is I’m suposed to be looking for. That last guy wasn’t very clear. Couldn’t he have just told us which buttons we need to rpess, or...?”  
“Here,” Ben offers, “Let me try.” Mina throws up her arms but vacates her seats and plops down on the wall next to the boooks, letting her head tp back out of exhaustion. Ben takes her seat and begins to familiarize himself with the known controls.  
Trey watches on and it is all he has tos top himself from trying t backseat drive. As a skilled gamer he’s used to figureing things out and that sometimes manifests in situations like this, where he is watching soebody else try to figure something out and is annoyed by it and wants to take over. He turns his back, tries to focus on the book, gets about a page and a half through listening to Ben’s ‘hmm’s and ‘huhs’ until he finally closes it and says “not, Ben, gie that to me.”  
“What?”  
“Scoot over and let me do this” Trey actually stands in Ben’s way, forcing his to sldie over a bit, unable to reach the controls he was currently exploring. It takes all of a minute for Trey to figure out everything it took Ben five minutes to discover, and he sets about exploring the options listed on one of the lower screens.  
Mina, across the room, is pretending to sleep, but getting more and more annoyed with the situation.  
Ben moves the paltter of cookies further from Trey’s reach and sits back down, watching. Basically the process just repeats itself over a few times and there isn’t much here to really talk about because after a few minutes Trey doesn’t know anything more than Mina did and Mina in the corner is starting to groan loudly and purposfully. Ben almost wants to ask her i she’s feel alright because she sounds like she’s sick.  
“Maybe we should call it a day,” ben says instead. Mina’s eyes snap open and he knows he messed up.  
“We can’t just call it a day,” she sais, more harsly than she intended.  
“Yeah,” Trey mumbles as he explores some options presented on the screens, “we cant even tell if it’s still light outside or not.”  
This just enrages Mina even more nd she stands up, fists clenched, shooting daggers at Trey with ehr eyes. “We can’t call it quits because if we do that we’re just going o keep doing that, over and over again. There has to be some way to do this - we were promised there’d be some way to do this-”  
“Hey,” Ben says trying to calm her down, “No one is saying we can’t do this, no one is saying give up indefinitely. I’m just thinking maybe take shifts, or sleep on it.”  
“Sleep where?” Mina asks. “You want to go back home, rinse and repeat? I disappeared, Ben, I can’t just show up again like nothing happened. I’m stuck in this tin box and if I don’t figure something out I’m going to stay stukc in here. I want to solve this problem and you two aren’t helping.” She makes as if to push Trey aside, wants to push Trey aside, but thinks better of it, and instead kicks the bottom of the console contols.  
“Hey hey!’ Trey calls, backing up a bit, holding his hands up to either protect himself or keep her baack. “Don’t break it! I don’t want to be stuck in here forever, with no way to get back to reality!”  
Mina huffs and takes a breah to calm herself donw, but when she opens her eyes again she is still upset, so she stalks to the other side of the room and finds herself closer to the source of the dog pee scent, which only makes ehr more uset.  
“Argh!” she shouts. ben is surprised by this sudden show of aggression - she always played ehrself as so mellow online.  
Honestly though I can commiserate with Mina. She is starting to feel stiffled, starting to feel frusrtrated at her inability to do anything or move on with the plot. She recognizes when plot gets stuck in a corner and she hates it, sees that its happening and wants some way physically to force it out, but that’s ususally not how it works. Usually trying to physically force a story off into a different direction is impossible. Usally it takes careful planning and mental force being exerted in all the right directions at all the right times.  
In this particular instance, however, Mina is in luck. Wanting to force some physical change, instead of kicking at the control panel as she had before, this time she kicks at the wall. I’m not generally a fan of kicking at walls, but when she does so two things happen. The first thing is that her foot hurts. Her smaller toes are stubbed and ehr shoe does nt do as much to sitffle the damage as a shoe normally woold, probably because she is wearing chucks which are canvase shows and canvas isn’t very protective. The other thing that happens is the wall gets dented. Not like metal getting dented when kicked at by someone with a lot of leg strength. Like drywall getting dented when kicked at by anyone with moderate strength, like an internet blogger fanartist who spends most of ehr time with her computer and only exercises her legs by walking around her school campus.  
A lot of rambling and description, I know, but that’s what happens. The wall gets dented, some of the ppaitned drywall crumbles inwards. Mina almost doens’t even notice. and once they do notice they stair for a few moments.  
“Um,” Ben says stupidly. Trey’s navigation controls are forgotten.  
“Is that?” Mina asks, partly to herself. She reaches out a foot - her hurt foot - and softly kicks at the corners of the hole, letting them crumble inwards as well.  
“Wait!” trey cries out, “Sop! Don’t break down the wall! Whaat i that wall is the only thing separating us from a deadly vacuum of space?”  
Mina knocks on the eye-level protion of the wall. “It’s a bit thicker than regular drywall,” she says. “If there was a deadly vaccum of space on the other side, do yu think whoever made this thing woul have used something so easily breakable for the walls?  
“I don’t knw,” Trey says, “I don’t live in a ci fi.”  
Mina and I and even Ben here woud like to point out that Trey is wrong. he obvious does live in a sci fi. You don’t have metafictive space travel in a realistic fiction.  
“The answer is no,” Mina asays instead. The starts kicking lightly at the wall again. “I never even considered it.”  
“Considered what?” asks Ben.  
“What might be on the other side of this wall. It didn’t look like spaceship metal but I never considered what might be on the other side, if it’s void or airless space or maybe..” she trains off as she kicks a bit harder, reaching the other side of the drywall. There seet to be a few support beams within the wall, a little bit of hard wood but not enough to block the back of someone wanting to worker ehr way through.  
Mina kneels down and starts knockin on it with her kuckles, knocking the pieces aside until there is a hole large enough for her to look through.  
“Or maybe,” she says , “an actual place to explore out there.  
Trey is still hesitant but Ben goes to join her, looking through the hole. What he sees looks like a pool of green, Emerald green. he can’t make out any shapes.  
Come on,” mina says, the points, “Grabs one of thosse boooks, that big hardback one, and help me knock this down.”  
“I still don’t think knocking the wall down it that great of an idea,” Trey gives his inpout and i is ignores. This essentially has been a perfect example of physical violence solving a plot hole - transforming, if you will alow me, that mental plot hole into a pysical plot hole in the wall of stasis. It’s a beautiful metapphor or something I didn’t even intend to have happen. C’st la vie.  
Ben retrieves the book and he and Mina sppend a minute slowly knocking out a hole, working upwards and they do so. the wooden suport beams prove very little annoyances and within a few moments Mina can poke her full head through. She does so, because of course she does what else would you do in this situation, and breathes deep.  
“Is that air?” Trey asks.  
“Seems to be so,” Mina whispers into the cavern she sees around them. Ben hears her and relays the message to Trey.  
“What are you seeing,” asks Trey. Mina takes another good look around and pops her head back inntno the drywall room.  
“I’s a cavern,” she says.  
“Green?” Ben asks. She knows what he’s implying.  
“Emerald green,” she confirms. “Stone looking floor and walls, stalagmites or wahtever they’re called. There’s a pool or somethig - still, not flowing water. I seems to opne nough for a pahway leading forther in. There are no lights, jsut wahtever is spilling out of here.”  
At that point the tree of them loook around the room again.  
“I wasn’t going to mention it,” Trey says, staring up at the blacnk ceiling.  
“Where are the lights coming from?” Trey asks, saying what they’ve all been thinking.  
“Some sort of not-understandable sciecny thing?” Mina ventres. “I guess I just figured... comingg out of the walls themselves? BUt that idea’s kind of shot.”  
“Were we just not going to mention it?” Trey asks.  
“I wasn’t going to mention it,” Mina agrres. She uses the base of her hand to knock out another few inches, trying to make enough room to get a shoulder through.  
Ben sneezes once and everyone pointedly doesn’t mention the fact that seexing is a thing anyone has done so far on this journey. You know, the Japanese believe that one sneezes when one is beling talked about. Theat has a lot of scientific and fictional implications hat are sort of relevant but I’ll leave you to stw on that on your own and move on to telling you that Mina is now sticking her head back through the hole.  
“Should I cll out?” Mina asks, whispers to Ben standing next to her. “My voce will probably echo in here, it’s pretty quiet.”  
“That souds dangerous,” he says, “We on’t know if theres soemthing deadly in there or not.”  
Mina sighs and then says in a regular pitched voice, “You guys are way too nervous about deadly things.”  
“You’re the one,” Ben says frantically, “who said that eevry time we brought that up in a conversation, it became more likely to, you know, actually happen!”  
“I think that’s true,” Trey says, “I think I remember Ben saying hat, yeah.”  
“Yeah,” Mina sys “And your reaking out, if that is the case, is essentially the exact opposite of helpful. HELLO?” She shouts now, cutting Ben off jsut as he’s taking a breath to reply. He uses it to groan instead.  
There is a light that comes on immediately in the cavern when Mina’s voice begins to echo out into it. She can now see just how large the tunnel is - the ceiling, if that’s what it can be called, is very high up, disturbed bats blobs of black now flying around. The texture on the walls makes it look like a underground river once ran through here, that the pool is all that is left. There is a subtle curve to the halllway, eventually the distance disappears. In between, all she can see are the occasionna pools of water and some stalagmites sticking up everywhere. She pulls her head back in.  
See?” Mina says, gesturing towards the opening for Ben to look out, “I don’t see anyone at all, no bears or whatevr it is you’re worried about.”  
“Forge bears,” Trey says, stepping across the room so he can peer out with Ben, “I’d be more worried for Minotaurs or golems or something of that nature. Rock monster. Gorignak.”  
OK, sorry, no, he did not say Gorignak. I don’t think they have that movie in Ben’s universe. Probably not, they don’t have a lot of awesome stuff in Ben’s universe. I jsut think that would have been a great reference to have made at that moment so I decided to make it for him.  
“In metafictive space,” Mina deadpans. She looks out over the newly lit cave again and mumbles to herself “MEtafictive space,” Realizing that that’ exactly what this is. Metafictve space, the space they have been traveling through this whole time.  
“Wuick,” She says to ben gesturing towards the control panel, “Change the controls someehwre else!”  
“What?”  
“Just shift the dial a few time.” Her head still poking out the hole, Ben now moves over the the dial and turns it while Mina watches outside. Nothing changes. She frowns. “How about adjusting something else on the machine?”  
Ben does something else and still nothing changes. She drags her head back inside, careful of a wooden beam and accidentally kocking some drywall in.  
“We’re not moving at ll,” Mina says. “Outside, the cave is exactly the same, but if we were to go into the other room, we could transport somewhere entirely different.”  
“That’s the way things like this work,” Trey says, utlizing his vast knowledge on the weird and intangible. I can’t even tell if I’m beign sarcastic by saying that.  
Sighing and resigning himself to his fate, whatever it may be, Trey uses his elbow to knock out a bit more of the drywall, crumbling sections between his fingures and even using his forehead at one ppint when it gets difficult. He works to the side, uncovering an entire section of wooden suport beam, and Mina takes up working to the other side. Soon enought, they have a section opne large enough to slip out hrough, if one squeezed past the wooben beas. Mina does so.  
Her immediate reactio, once both feet are touching the green rock-like flooring, is to turn around and look at whevere she came out of.  
“Huh,” is all she says.  
“What?” Ben sticks his head out as well, squeezing past Trey with his bag and Trey dusts his jacket off. “What does it look like”  
“It looks like, well...” Ban manages to make it and turns to see what it is.  
“Another green wall,” he finishes her statememnt. The side wals of the save are reflected agin on what looks like a back wall, like someone was driling in with a large flat drill and gave up at this exact spot. When Ben goes to knock agains the wall, it feels like normal rockk, even though he can see bits of drywalll mized with ground rock dusted around his feet. The crack in the wall rock is letting light from the transport machine escape out, and he sees Trey stading there, staring back at him through the wooden support beams which now seem very out of place.  
“This is very weird,” Mina says, and understatement.  
Trey clambors out to join them and doesn’t even comment on the seemingly rock wall they’ve climbed through and instead does the first logical ghing - he starts trying to see if he can break through the rock on this side ot access the transport machine. Spoilers: He can’t. Drywall and easily breakable on on side, on the other side it is tough rock bruising agains Trey’s skin. He turns to face the others.  
“Well,” Trey says, matter-of-factly, “This seems to be the beginnig of the final dungeon.”  
W’at?” Mina.  
“Well, I’m assuming it’s the final dungeon. Sometimes games trick you like that, make you think it’s the end when there’s really quite a bit more left to go. I think though we can safely press ahead as if this is the final dungeon.”  
“Waht is this,” Ben asks, “a video game? this is not a video game.”  
“I don’t remember that idea bein ruled out,” Trey narrows his eyes like come on Ben this is srious bisnizz. “We’ve confirmed this is a story and it could be a movie or a TV show even though that idea seems highly unlikely, but did you guys even cosnider a video game?”  
“I thought we’d settled confortably on book,” Ben says. “I mean we even met the narrator already and do video games like that even have ‘authrs’?”  
“They have story-designers. People who create the story of the game. Someone there could be the ‘narrator’ we meet earlier. Everything right here though screams video game.”  
I’m going to pause my narration right here to say that they never really decde whether or not this is a bok or a video game. This fact, instead, is passed on to you dear reader to decide. You get to choose. This is a choose-your-own addventure story. As long as the adventure you choose is the one the characters actually take you on. Otherwise I wont be able to write it out for you. You’ll have to turn to fanfiction for that.”  
“What,” Ben says meanwhile, “about this screams video game?”  
“Come on. Tunnel, which we jsut hapened to break into, which only gos in one irection. No specific instructions have been given to us and yet the first objective here is obvious, and there’s room for exploration.”  
“What the first objective then?”  
Trey points down the end of teh tunnel. “That way,” he says, “is teh clear objective. Ecplore. Take the rode and see where it leads.”  
“He has a poin,” Mina says. “IF this were a video game, the thing to do would be obvious. You don’t ned instructions because the point of the game is to find the instructions on your own.”  
“Fine,” Ben says, and gestiired, “You lead us.”  
“Willingly,” Trey gives a smug smile and steps forward, leading the way. The ground is mostly even but sllopes down and back up in areas, with large lower areas where riveletts must have un through. he leads them down one, up to the first pool in sight.  
The water is either clear or green tinted. hey can’t tell because the greenness of the water makes everything look a bit green tinted.  
“Do you think it’s safe to drink?” Mina asks.  
“I think as leader Trey should try some first.” BEn grins at his own not really a joke joke. Trey ignores him and kneels down, scooping out some water in the cup on his hands. It fallls through and he stilll can’t tell what coloor it is.  
“It looks very shallow,” he says, “but it’s difficult to tell. I don’t think there’s anything in the water though.”  
“Why is that important?” Ben sak. It’s not like we’re going to go in t the water.  
“Because if this was a game,” Mina says, You’d have to explore every option. Maybe there’s something good down there, hiidden. Maybe there’s something nessecay too.”  
“I’m guess not, though,” Trey says, stands pack up, and picks his way around the pool t walk on. They continue on like that, walking through rivelet cuots and passing stalagmites. Ben knocks on one and it feels eactly the same way th rock wal felt. The effort exherted is a bit more than the walk on the plains, bu there walking slowler and in shorter burst, and Ben assumes he still have sme of the drug or whatever he was gien earlier in his syste,.  
Trey stops by every pond they pass and there is nothing in all in each of them, or at least nothing tey can see. He takes his jacket off at one point and reaches his arm in, all the way to she short sleeve of his tshirt, and doens’t think he finds the center bottom. “For a pond,” Mina says, “The water must have murrowed pretty deep.”  
Though not tired or exhasted, Ben is starting to feel a little bit sleepy, and Mina’s arms are a bit tired from carrying the platter I forgot to mentioned ealrier that they took with them. Ben offers to carry it in his backpack, and hey stop for a few minutes to shuffle things around, Ben giving her a few things in his back to carry in hers, and he carefuly slides to wrapped platter into the free space in his bag, suurounding it with a jacket she had and a few of the smaller, softer items they had collectively.  
Walking now, his bag is a bit heavier but not too much to mind. He does mind, though, the fact that he is getting thirtiser and thirstier as they walk. He hasn;t had anything t drink since just before that nt-reall-mexican food dinner. As they reac the next pool of water, he picks up his pace a tad in order to stoop down just before Trey.  
“Hey, waht are you doing,” Trey askes, affronted.  
“So we’re not thinking poisonous, are we?” Ben asks. Trey’s been sticking his hands in enough times that Ben dosn’t feel very much danger any more.  
“I don’t know,” Mina says, “You’re the protagonist, so if you try, it’s probably safe.”  
“If not there will be some convienient way to save you nearby,” Trey chips in.  
“Thanks,” Ben says, steas himself, then dips both hands in to take a drink. The water is colde than he expected, and only seems to get colder as it travels down his gut. he can almost feel it pooling in his stomach. IT feels plesant. He takes another gulp.  
“The safest thing to do is wait about five minutes to see if you drop dead,” Trey says, “If not, we can keep walking, and maybe you’ll die in an hour.”  
“Haha,” ben says, then takes another gulp, more because he lovest the taste than because he’s still thirtsy He stands up and stretches and they take a resptire and t ends up being at least five minutes before Trey starts walking agian.  
“And you know? This whole thing is pretty much just a repetive sequence of the kids walking, taking break, waxing exisential, Trey showing common sense, etc etc. I’m going to move on now, after about a half hour walk, to the time when they notice the water pools become more and more common, and the walls f the tunnel getting wider, until suddenly they’re standing in a large carvn. Ben can’t even see the other side its so large. the walls form a dome and at the very top is a large light source that it hurts Ben’s eyes to stare directly out.  
Mina is a bit relieved to finally come across some source of light, even if it doesn’t explain how everything else had been lit up.  
THe floor of the cavern, however, is completely drwoned by the same cool water hey had walked past hundreds of times. It’s not so much a puddle or a pond as a lake. In the middle is a bridge, arved out of the green stone, reaching a few yards out over the water before it appears to have broken, the rest crumbling down into the lake.  
“Well,” Mina says, “This is different.”  
“Huh,” Trey says, because he hadn’t really expected this, exactly, and he’s still trying to decide what to make of it. They slowly pick their way closer, until Ben kicks his foot to cause ripples in the lake. He notes mentally that even now he doesn’t think he’s see any small rocks or grit. I mean there’s been some, in places where it looks like things have broken, but the floor of the rock tunnel has been almost entirely smooth. He’s run his hands over enough stalgmites to know that whatever sort of rock thi stuf is, it’s unusual.  
Mina satrst to walk in one direction and hits the place where the wall curves too much to be walked on. The lake water comes right up to the flat part of the wall, with no way around. Ben looks and sees that it’s the same on the other side.  
“What now?” he asks. “I didn’t see any offshooting tunnels back, and this was obviously the only way to go.”  
Trey looks around as well, “I’m pretty sure we have to find some way to egt across.”  
“HOw are we going to do that?” Mina calls out to them, ehr voice echoing slightly off the walls.  
“Well that’s the point,” Trey says, slightly annoyed, “we have to figure it out.” He does the obvious this, which is to step up the steps f the stone bride, slowly and deliberately, looking around to see what changes as his perspective changes. Ben puts the backpack down again because heavy and break.  
During this break Mina nd Ben sit down together on a slope of the stone and let Trey do the work to figure out what to do.  
“The water isnt green,” Ben sas as he looks out over the lake. “It’s large enough so you can tell. It’s just clear.”  
“Yup,” agrees Mina, nodding in a ‘that was a totlly important thing you just said right there’ kind of way.  
“I thought... it might be.”  
Mina nods again, less srcasticaly, because she knnows exactly what Ben means “Emerald Streams,” she says.  
“I mean it doesn’t look anything like tht at all,” Ben says, looking out over the cavern, “Whagt you see in the show. It’s just one tunnel, where one stream used to be. It’s not opened up at all. Thi isn’t the show.”  
“nope.”  
“But they must have known. They must have seen it.”  
“The guy I stole the machine from,” Mina says again quietly, then pauses, then continues, “he worked for the show remember?”  
“So he used the machine and used what he knew about to tell the story...which exists somewhere, right?”  
“Right. If it was tld to us then the story has to really exist somewhere.”  
“BUt if he used the mahcine, how did he find this place? We only foudn t because you...”  
“I kicked a wall.” She grins and Ben chuckles a bit, and then they boh lugh quietyly together, The sounds bounces off the walls and Trey turns to give them a disapproving look. It’s a ‘wow geat thanks I’m doing all the work over here go ahead and laugh about stupid thing together i don’t mind’ look.  
“Maybe he kicked a wall too,” Mina says.  
“And repaired it? There was no fault in that wal. There wasn’t new drywall or new paint of new anything. Tere wasn’t any fault in the rock wall either.”  
Mina thinkgs for a moment and Ben thinks and finally he says “Maybe that guy, the one you stole the machine from? Maybe he wasn’t the only one working for the show who had a machine.”  
“What?”  
“There could easily have been others. I think. There are probably other machines. And ours was connnected to this part of... the void or whatevr? And maybe there’s another one somewhere, connected to another part of this place, another tunnel somewhere, and they found it.”  
Mina says nothing as they watch trey staring down at the lake, throwing in something that was in his pocket.  
“The obvious thing to do,” she finally says, “would have been to knock in the other wall.”  
“Waht?”  
So one wall was really made of drywall, right? What about the other wall. There was more than one direction we could have walked.”  
Ben says nothing but he thinks that if there was ever a good time to do a literal facepalm, this would have been it This, he thinks, is why he doesn’t lay video ganes. He likes stories but he would never have thought to do something so out of the box as knock down the other wall.  
“Hey,” Trey callls out to them, heading down the steps too at a time, “Get that for me, will you?” He gestures to the stalagmite sittins upright behind Ben and Mina. Mina turns, raises an eyebrow.  
:this?” she asks.  
“Yeah, can you bring it here?”  
“Uh, no? How? It’s sort of connected to the floor, if you hadn’t noticed.”  
Trey gives her a disapproving frown. “It’s bearly three inches in diameter halfway up, You can break that”  
“What is this stuff made out of?” she asks as she stands up. Ben laughs  
“And how do you know the word ‘diamter?”  
“Haha very funny. If your weak arms aren’t strong enough then it’s probably because you have no muscle and not because that rock is made of anything really hard. I can get it for you if y ou need me too,” he says, flexing an arm in a manner taht is less subtle than he hopes.  
Mina huffs and grips the pole-like rock, giving it a tug. There’s no leeway. She tugs it again, with more force, and still nothing gives.  
There’s some joking and Trey gets up to try his hand at it, with no different result. “Huh,” he says, looking around, “if this were a video game...” his voice trails off and he stoops to look around the base of the jutting rock feature.  
“Here we go,” he says with a smile. He repositions himself around the stalagmite 9gosh I hate that word for some reason) and points. “here.”  
Ben crouches to look. There is a crack, a few inches wide, around the base. They had been pulling against the fault. Trey stands up, kicks at it for a second, then lenas all his weight forward to push against the rock. Ben watches as the crack separates, widens a bit, and the stalagmite begins to lean, further and further until Ben makes a mental ecision not to say anything and Trey himself topples down over the jagged piece on the ground.  
“Ouch,” Mina cringes, “You OK?”  
“Yeah,” Trey rolls voer and rubs a leg that’s bee scrapped, “just barely missed the goods. I’m fine.”  
“So, what they heck was that for?” Ben asks, picking up the rock role. It is lighter than he would have expected, the lajjed bits look almost like crystalized something or other. He fights a sudden urge to taste it, to discover if it is sugary or salty. Spoiler alert - it would have been salty. Duh.  
“I’ll show you,” Trey says as he hoiss himself up, then roughly yanks the green pole out of Ben’s hands. He leads the back onto the bridge. Ben is hesitant to follow much further though, as he doesn’t like thw ay it hanks out over teh water with no suport.  
“Look,” Trey says, leaning down over the water. He jabs the pole into the water and Mina, who isn’t afraid to stand out on the bridge with Trey, is surprised that it doesn’t go down as far as it could have.  
“Is there a platform there?” she asks. Absently so looks back to make eye contact with Ben and is surprised to see him standing so far back. She mentally chuckles.  
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Trey says, moving the pole around as far as he can, “there seems to be some flat surface here. I can’t see it though - the water is doing something to block my perspective. The entire bottom of the lake looks at least twenty yards further down.  
“Ben,” Mina calls, “Get over here, it’s not going to bite.”  
“Ugh,” Ben moans back, “i wasn’t afraid of anything btiing, and now I am. How do we know there aren’t any piranahas or something down in there?”  
Mina considers and shruggs. “We dont,” is ehr answer, “but if there are Trey here will fight them off with his handy dandy pathway finding stick. That’s what he would do if he was in a video game.”  
“Yeah,” Trey laughs, and the joke he intends to start is cut off by a sudden idea. “Ooh, mayeb this is like those ‘Deliver the Package’ quests, you know? Where they want you to protect the immportant person so they can do what they’re supopsed to do without being eten by aliens - except the important person is you, for some reason, and the aliens are little guppy fish.”  
Without waiting for another response, Trey braces himself and hops down off the bridge, landing with a splash on an unseen platfom just below the water. The soles of his shoes are underwater and the splash gets the bottom few inches of his pants wet but otherwise he’s fine.  
“Seems to be working,” Mina says, slowly following suit. “Come on Ben, We got to get this mission over with, we’re so close to the end, I can taste it.”  
“That’s salt water,’ he mumbles, even though there is no saltwater and that really didn’t make any sense. He moves to the end of the bridge as Trey moves out, using the green pole like a blind man’s cane to find the edges of the platform tehy’re traversing.  
Mina leans down the feel the platform as Ben joins her in the water. “Argh,” he says as he lands, realizing he’s still wearing canvas shoes, “No, they’re oing to get soaked, argh.”  
Mina laughs. “Take them off them.”  
“Tehy’re already soaked through, whats the-”  
“Will you too hurry up?” Trey calls back. “The pathway’s straight from here to you, but I just hit an edge and I think it twists up here.  
They make their way slowly, Ben feelings around slowly with his heavy feet before putting his weight down fully on any one spot. The pathway does indeed twist, a 909 degree turn that takes them in a new direction away from the opposite side of the lake. Behind Trey, they move faster, through another few twists. Mina can tell the path is slowly taking them across the lake, if in the most awkward manner possible.  
“What’s p with all the twisting around?” she asks, almost certain that they’re now walking one direction a few feet away from a path that took them in the opposite direction just minutes ago.  
“Game logic,” Trey says, “If the path doesn’t twist, then as soon as ou egt on it’s harder fail. If you have to keep checking the pathway though, that takes more skill to figure it out.”  
“That’s stpid,” Ben breathes. He’s sort of been holding his breaht this whole tim,e my the wy. Any minute he’s expecting a shark fin to appear or some sort of deepwater monster and he’s reaffirming his life second by second. poiller alert again, and I’m sorry if there are tooo many spoilers here I just don’t want you to worry - nothing attacks them. They make it out perfectly safe.  
That isn’t for maybe a half hour though. The walking is slow, especially with the water, the twisting and turning, and how big this cavern. In fact, I take it back, it was probably at least an hour or more. On the other side o the lake is a matching broken off bridge, and a matching sloping cave floor. Instead of another tunnel, though, there is a wall about twenty yards from the waters edge.  
“Oh no,” Ben says unhappily. Luckily, about twnty minutes later when they’re closer to see, they notice doorways in the rock wall. Actual freaking doorways, with metal frames and metal doors because you know this whle story has been making perfect sense from the beginning.  
Trey climbed onto the other bridge first, pulling himself up and then turning to hep Mina. She ignored his hand and pulls herself up, shaking ehr wet shoes and frowning at the squelnch they make. Trey helps Ben up, and Ben practically calapses on the ground, trying to regain his breath and forgetting to be afraid of large overhangs. He finally unties his shoes, peeling them off and then following until he has his bare, wet feet out in the open. He flexes his toes.  
“I don’t like this,” Ben says, and Trey and Mina both ignor him. Trey leads the way and Ben tires the shoelaces together so he can carry them. He mentally thnkas himself for not having dropped the bag with the cookis in the weird water  
The next room is large, though not cavernous, and there are severally pillars of some sort of grey substance standing on a perfectly flat, square shaped tiles floor, bluish and offset from the green stone the kids are standing on. Ben does even know what to think and Mina furrows ehr eyebrows.  
“What the heck?” she says, stepping forward, “what are we supposed to do with this.”  
Trey looks dumbstruck and doesn’t say anything.  
“They’re too tall to climb up,” Mina muses, then turns and sees the look on Trey’s face. “What?”  
“It’s a block pushing puzzle,” he says.  
“What?”  
“A block pushing puzzle. It’s like classic video game trope. You have blocks on a sheet of ice and you push them around to make the right formation - I can’t believe it.”  
Mina knows what Trey is talking about but Ben has so idea, and just takes his word for it.  
“You’re right,” mina says. “I’ve seen this before.”  
Trey steps forward and braces his hands against the closest brick, then gives it a good shove. The block slides over the tractionless floor and slides right up to another brick, hitting it with a difinitive sound and stopping without bouncing back at alll.  
“Am I the only one who doesn’t think that makes any sense?” Ben asks, then quickly cuts of trey’s reply by saying ‘and don’t say ‘video game logic’ - i’ve heard that, a thousand times before, it still doesn’t apply here.”  
“You’ve got to adbit,” Mina says with a raised eyebrow, “it really does feel like we’re in a video game. I mean, we probably are, somewhere.”  
“And I’m the important person you have to deliver so i can bring cookies to a creator being?” Ben says. Neither trey nor mina respond and there’s some silence for a moment, then they move on from that line of thought and Trey starts towards the next nearest block.  
“You can’t just keep pushing them randomly,” Mina says quickly.  
“I’m not,” Trey reaches up, takes hold of the edges of the block, and pulls himself onto it. I’m pretty sure that’s a thing people can do. He steadies himself for a moment and then slolwy stands up, looking around. “I need to get a better look at this puzzle so i can figure out how it’s solved.  
Mina starts to walk round to the side while Ben attempts a whistle and says “geeze, this is pretty huge though.”  
“From our perspective, yeah,” Mina says. “It’s not actually larger than a normal block pushing puzzle - i’ve seen some huge ones, but this seems managable.”  
“Much different when you don’t have a bird’s eye camera angle though,” Trey says. He stands dramatically, hand shielding his eyes from absolutely nothing because there’s still no discernable light source, looking around. Ben drops his backpack again.  
“Careful” Mina says, “Don’t break the cookies.” Trey chuckles, but Ben unzips the back and reaches in, rummaging around a bi before pulling out a notebook and a pen.  
“Here,” he hands them both to Mina. “Draw it out, as you guys see it, and then it should be easier to figure out.”  
“Good thinking, NOvice!” Trey callls down, “Here, hand that to me, while you go check that out.” He takes the notebook from Mina and points her to a depression in the flooring across the tiles. She runs onto the tiles and then hesitantly tests her footing and it turns out that the blocks are the only things that act frictionless beause, i’ve got to say it and you’re not going to like it: video game logic.  
Alright I’m not going to sugar coat this or make it all neat and whatever - Mina runs to the odd tile and it turns out to be a giant, perfectly block-sized button, which depresses as she steps on it. There is a doorway on the other side of the room, which she doesn’t notice at first, and which is blockked by three sets of bars - one set virtical, one set horizontal, and another set virtical. As Mina steps onto the button and it presses down, there is a deep sound from underbeath the cavern, and the middle set of bars retract back into the wall.  
There is some thinking and some shouting and some drawing and some more loudly talking across a giant room, but they eventually figure out that there are three buttons scattered on the tiled floor, and each one is a step to unlocking the doorway.  
The obvious thing to do is have everyone go step on a button. Trey climbs down from his perch, finished sketch in hand, and directs Ben in one direction while he takes off in another. Mina, with the best vantage on the doorway, confirms that when alll three buttons are compressed, the doorway is wide open.  
Then she steps off her tile and confirms that the buttons will not stay down unless there is something on top of them, “Not something heavy,” she says, “Because I probably weigh less than the two of you, but something of probably at least a hundred pounds.”  
“So this seems obvious,” Trey lays out the skinny on what’s going on. “Three buttons, which need to be pressed down so we can continue.”  
Ben says nothing, though he’s probably thinking just what you’re thinking now - that there is really only one button that needs to be pressed down, so that at least one person can continue on. And that person is probably him. This is getting closer and closer to the end, he mentally confesses to himself. Maybe he didn’t taste it before like Mina had, but he tastes it now.  
Actually reading about puzzle-solving is probably kind of boring. Trey turns out to have kmisdrawn a lot of things on his sketch and Mina takes that over. Ben pushes something without having been told to and geets scolded. Trey miscalculates something and they think they’ve screwed the entire thing up for a minute there. It takes about twenty minutes to figue out the puzze and by then all they’ve got is ne button pressed, nd two blocks sitting uselessly by a corner.  
Mina looks knowingly at Ben. “Well,” she says, and unexpected softness in her voice, “this is it I guess.”  
“What?” Trey asks, out of the loop.  
“I believe so,” Ben says. “I’ll come back, I’m sure. U’ll tell you everything.”  
“You better.”  
“Wait,” Trey says.  
“I’m going to confess thouhg,” Mina says, putting a hand of Ben’s shoulder after he retrieves his backpack, “I’m a bit jealous that it’s you not me. This whole thing was my idea to start with.”  
“I know. I’m sorry.”  
“Is Ben leaving us or something?”  
“It’s Ok - you’re the main character. It’s fine to be a side protagonist - they’re usually the best anyways.”  
Ben finally looks to Trey. “There are two more buttons,” he says, “Which you two can stand on while I go to the next room.”  
“I’m pretty sure I can figure out the rest of this puzzle Ben.”  
“I don’t know if there even is a rest of this puzzle. And even if there is, you had us doing the same thing over and over because you forgot where the button really was so I’m pretty sure you couldn’t figure it out.”  
“We weren’t going to mention that ever again, remember?”  
“Trey,” Mina cuts in, “this is where the story is going. This is where the story has been gooing since the beginning. Ben gets to meet the creator and see the cosmic role or whatever on his own. It’s sort of a story trope and it belongs to Ben now, and we’ve done a lot of cool things and now we’ve got to stand on some buttons for a few minutes and you need to just go with it.”  
Trey almost pouts, then puts on a mock brave face and walks towards his button. “OK,” he says loudly so he can be heard, “Ben, I’ll do this, for you, but you can easily shout through the bars if it turns out there’s something horrible in there and you need to escape, alright?”  
“Alright,” Ben says with a smile. Mina walks to the other button, and Ben walks to the now free doorway. He peeks through, sees more of the same, then turns to look at his friends.  
Mina gives him a thumbs up. Trey nods dramatically like in an action film. Ben ggoes through the doorway.

-

Nothing overly dramatic happens. The next room is more of the same green tunnel and he hears water flowing in the distance. He turns and the dorwa is still open and he can still see Mina and Trey, standing like chess pieces. He waves. They wave back.  
Ben moves forward a bit, adjusts tha backpack on his back, walks forward some more, notices the incline of the floor. The hallway is small, not closterphobic narrow but much more intimate that the previous hallway, and steadily rising. It leaves Ben out of breath pretty quick.  
Then he reaches a cliff edge, a pathway continuing flat to onne direction and a river of sorts flowing beside. Ben finds himself nervous on the walkway - the water is spraying so much now, everything’s starting to feel a bit misty and lightly damp. He holds his backpack straps like an elementary school kid and continues onward, feeling ever more sombor by his surroundings. This is no longer the ridiculous game that it had been for a while there.  
The Ciff walkway hangs over the river - a glorified stream, ben reminds himseld, nothing extrememly dangerud - which runs rapidly alongside. There are rocks jutting out, and mini-waterfalls. The waterspray forms a thicker misty the further on Ben walks. Turning back, he can still barely see where the river forks to one side, and the tunnel to another, leading to the room where Mina and Trey are probably still standing stupidly on some oversized buttons, trying to argue over whether or not to continue attempting to solve the puzzle. Ben chuckles and comforts himself in the image, while also managing to distract himself from walking just long enough to lose his footing for a moment, starting to slip.  
Ben yelps, hoping no one or no thing heard it (I heard it - you heard it) and reaches forward as he falls, accidentally catching himself on a handhold in the cave wall. It’s not one of those random convienent ‘phew that was great timing!’ handholds either, because this isn’t a normal cave. Ben begins to realize that as well. He can’t see the wall, or at least not very well, The mist is getting thicker and thicker, and he can barely make out what’s in front of him.  
But he can run his hands over the familiarly smooth stone before him and recognizes that it’s changed. It’s no longer acting like a boring, normal cave wall, and not even in the ‘except it’s green’ sense. If he’s not mistaken (he’s not), Ben thinks he can feel patterns. Lines, straight and angled, not random but purposful. He can’t tell what the larger image is, or if there even is one, but under the mist the cave itself seems to be transforming.  
Ben keeps one hand on the wall to his left, fingers pressed into the groove of the design to steady himself as he tries to eye the water warily. It forms a sort of music in his ears, the combination of everything around him and yet nothing going on at the same time. the path leads him against the flow of the water, which is getting higher and higher and, he realizes with a jolt, slower and slower.  
The mist begins to fade. There is no longer a fog over his eyes and Ben can see a bit of the distance ahead of him. The path inclines upward just a touch more where a last, final, plesent looking waterfall gently sends the river off on it’s course. He doesn’t know where he is or what is going on, but Ben feels the very air he breathes change. The bag on his back almost seems to grow heavier and he becomes more aware of it again.  
The most startling change comes in the images on the walls though. Ben still can’t see everything up ahead, and with the pure green coloring he can’t make out all the shapes, but some of them don’t confine themselves to their two dimensional surface. He slows down his walk and sees birds flying overhead, intricate dragons swimming in the water, tangles of vines hiding smaller, finely detailed animals that seem to move and change as his perspective does.  
The artistry almost distracts Ben from the simple stairstep upward the path finally takes, matching it alongside the calmly gurgling water at the top of the waterfall. He takes the step without thinking, trying to catch everything around him, not even noticing the figure sitting before him in the small alcove he finally walks into. Compared to the ornate figures on the walls the being before Ben is almost too simple to be noticed.  
Reader, I am a dedicated journalist of sorts, and as such I will never lie outright in my storytelling. I may stretch the truth or ignore certain facts to fit what I like about events, and I may occasionally make up a few things to fill certain gaps, but I will never outright lie. This is why I must tell you now that I cannot see here what Ben saw here. Was the figure a human? A woman or a man? Was it some sort of alien being with two heads and grey scales? I can’t say with any accuracy at all. Only Ben can say what he sees here, and he never will say.  
But Ben doesn’t see it at first, or maybe more accurately he sees it but doesn’t give it any notice until he realizes that all the pattersn and igures around the edge of the rooom keep gently guiding his eyes to the throne, if that’s what it is, on the back wall. On the throne sits a Creator.  
I think the thing is looking down at Ben, and I think once he realizes that his heart sort of stops. Maybe it doesn’t have eyes lie normal humans do. Maybe he’s just embaressed about being waited on.  
Ben doesn’t know what to say, and the thing speaks (or something). “Ben.”  
The voice sort of fills Ben’s whole body, so maybe the being doesn’t speak so much and telecommunicate, but you know what? I think you’ve got it with the whole ‘author can’t describe supernatural being’ thing so from here on out I’ll keep the descriptors as normal as possible.  
Within half a moment Ben thinks that his natural reaction should be to point to himself and do a ‘who, me?’ face - but he can’t. Staring up at the creator being now that gimmick would be too forced and awkward. Instead he attempts a bow, and his face goes red with shame halfway through because wow that was a stupid thing to do, he thinks.  
“Ben,” The being says again and maybe fsort of stands up or something, “I believe you have something for me.”  
“Oh,” Ben had almost forgotten. He quickly slips the backpack off his shoulders annd kneels down to rummage inside. He hasn’t stopped feeling embaressed for himself. A little voice in his head that sounds like Trey asks ‘wow, are you really giving cookies to a ridiculously powerful omnipotent being in this secret meta-world? Cookies?”  
He fishes them out anyways, still reasonable-looking in their bag, bits of chocolate starting to smear in places on the plastic. He stands up and awkwardly holds them out, saying “here.” The creator being takes them.  
“Thanks,” the being says and sits back down or something. It openns the bag fluidly, almost gracefully Ben thinks, and pops one into its mouth.  
“You’re the creator,” Ben then says, for lack of anything better to say. The being gives him a halfheart nonverbal confirmation. “You created the world I live on, my universe.” It’s not a question but a satement, because Ben isn’t entirely sure if he’s allowed to ask anything yet.  
“You just yours,” the being says, no sign of the act of eating fumbling its speach. “I’ve created many worlds. It’s useful.”  
“Useful?” Ben pauses to think, then adds “how many worlds? All of them? Did hyou create all of realty?”  
“Heck no, I’m not that powerful. I’m a nobody, kid - reality much bigger and more complicated than you or I.”  
Ben blinks, the appropriate response to being told something insane that you can’t understand. The being pops another cookie into it’s mouth and makes a satisfied sound. “Did you know these are the best cookies in your entire world?” it asks.  
“I had a... suspicion....” There’s another awkward pause as Ben waits for the being to say something it never intended to say, and then he finally speaks up. “My friend wanted me to come here and ask you something.”  
“Mina, yes, I know.”  
“OK, so... can you give me an answer?”  
“I can’t answer a question that hasn’t been asked to me directly. Or more accurately, I wont.”  
Ben takes a deep breath and looks around again at the shapes on the walls. He wasn’t watching them early but he could swear they’ve moved at least a bit.  
“What is our purpose in life?” Ben finally asks, going for the big one first. “What are we supposed to do? You created us so you should know - what was I created for? And Mina and Trey. We were put together in this story - it is a story, right? - but what is our goal?”  
The being waits a moment to respond, and finally says “There are two answers to that question, and you wont like either.”  
“I can take it,” Ben says, and then he thinks and realizes that yes, he can. He has lost any grasp on time but it seems like only a while ago all he wanted to do was lie in his bed and work on another fanfiction and ignore grand complex realities. Now, as he asks the basic question of the universe - the very meaning of life - Ben finds that he actually means it.  
“Look,” the being says, and with one gesture the crystalline walls of the cave change color, form a new image so real Ben thinks he’s actually floating in the air above a vast nondescript plain. “I create worlds, which astonishes you but among my people is no big deal, just as among your people, making cookies is no big deal, but a pretty big deal to ants. No offense.”  
Ben doesn’t respond, still marveling at the sights. His view shifts gradually, just like being in the machine and teleporting to new stories. One moment he’s over an ocean, which gradually shifts to a craggy mountainside, then a deep forest.  
“I make worlds but that’s it,” the being continues. “I don’t make the people who inhabit them.”  
Ben lets that sink in. “Then you didn’t make me?”  
“No - and your next question is who did, but that I can’t answer. Knowledge isn’t something my people know how to make, we only know how to use it. So the first part of your answer is that.”  
Ben feels a bit of disappointment, but then the being continues.  
“I did, however, assemble you. You and everyone else you know and have ever known. I create worlds and setups, and then I set them up. The purpose for your creation isn’t something I can know, but I do know what you were assembled to do.”  
Ben finds himself back in the small alcove of the cave, visions of woodland streams fading until all that remains is the trickling water, flowing from the being’s throne and gathering in size to fall down the clifface and begin the mouth of the river.  
“The waters of that last world feed my garden. That was its purpose. You brought me cookies. That was yours.”  
Ben waits for something else to be said but the being stopped talking and takes another bite.  
“Cookies?” Ben says in disbelief. “That’s it?”  
The being makes a noncommital body motion, like a shrug, and says “I told you that you wouldn’t like the answer.”  
“My whole purpose in life was to bring you cookies? That’s it, I’m done, I can die a success now?”  
“No no,” the being quickly says, “not at all. As I said, I don’t know what your purpose in life is-”  
“Yeah you said that,” Ben cuts the being’s speech off before it can start rambling on again, “That doesn’t really make anything better. I came this whole way-!”  
“You’re not understanding me. It wasn’t your purpose to bring me cookies, or rather it was, but only because it was your entire world’s purpose to bring me cookies. A dessert, at the end of the day, because I wanted some. So I set you guys all up in the perfect pattern in order to bring about what i wanted. I knew it would result in this overlong conversation but that’s the price you pay, you know?”  
Ben looks down at his feet, the only thing within sight that isn’t hurting his brain right now.  
“Ben,” the being says again, and suddenly Ben doesn’t see it at this awesome powerful being with ultimate power over him, but as an overpowered peer. “I did not create you, so I don’t know what your purpose in life is. If there’s something more powerful than both of us that did create you, maybe it can tel you what your purpose for being is. All I know is my purpose in setting you out on my world like I did. I wanted dessert. It was literally that simple. Your world’s ‘purpose’ is done but your world is not done - you can go back, I’ll make it easy for you, and do whatever you want. Literally whatever you want, I wont and can’t stop you. You can beat the odds like you already did and find the one who did create you, find out what you’re supposed to do, and then just not do it if you want. I may have set up your entire world to get what I want - the right pairings to produce the right offspring, the right genius at the right time to create the best recipe, the exact motivation in the right people - but other things happened that I did not much care for, because you can still do whatever you want. I manipulated you, it’s true, you’re like an ant to me so I really don’t care - but you still have your free will.”  
Ben, still staring at his shoes, makes up his mind at that point. He looks up again, inwardly sighs as the uncaring being before him eats another cookie, and gives a small nod/bow. “Well if we’re done here,” Ben says, “I’ll just go.”  
“Bye,” the being is aready ignoring him.  
Ben turns in place, grabs his backpck, and starts walking. He takes the stairs carefully, looks around at the river as it grows, and the intricate designs in the stone. This, he realizes a bit too late, is what the being meant as its ‘garden’. An exquisite garden at that.  
Mina, Ben knows, will be disappointed. She was the one who wanted this to happen - if she hadn’t wanted it, Ben would never have delivered his package. Her want was manipulated, but it was still real, and the payment wont be satisfying. ben thinks to himself that he doesn’t really want to tell her that there is no point.  
But he looks back, just one time, slowing is walk. Maybe that answer will be unsatisfying, but it is the truth, in a way. If there is a point then it can’t be known. The river reaches back to the throne of the creator - not a creator then, but an assembler - still barely in sight through the growing mist.  
“I don’t know what the purpose is,” Ben mumbles, practicing his answer, “But I know what we’re supposed to do with ourselves, to get the story of our lives rolling. Whatever we want. Whatever feels right and good. We don’t have to wait for it to be written down to know it; we create our own story.”  
Maybe other writers will disagree with that thought, but the moment when the protagonist finally comes to understand that on their own is a truely great moment.  
Realizing he had stopped walking for a moment, Ben chuckles. “It’s a Rube Goldberg machine,” he says to himself, then sighs. “The whole thing. Right from the beginning.”  
Still looking back, he watches as the foggy figure in the distance pops another cookie into its mouth, and says, “well, that seemed pretty pointless.”


End file.
